Prosecutors Receive Evidence Ruining Their Like Case In opposition to Letitia James

A Justice Division investigation into Current York Lawyer Peculiar Letitia James yielded records that also can merely potentially smash the Trump administration’s plans to convict her of mortgage fraud.

The DOJ, led by inexperienced Trump-appointed period in-between U.S. Lawyer Lindsey Halligan, accused James of committing mortgage fraud and mendacity about a second home being rented out as an “funding property,” amassing “hundreds” in hire money and saving over $17,000 within the technique.

However prosecutors who investigated James warned Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Seibert, that the evidence for these claims wasn’t so decided. They came across that James allowed her niece and her kids to live within the rental hire-free in 2020, and she handiest reported amassing $1,350 in hire money on her tax return from that year, which used to be allegedly to duvet the trace of utilities. The puny sum undercuts the DOJ notion that she used to be the usage of it as an funding property.

Authorities lawyers are moreover doubtful that they’ll be ready to existing that James committed mortgage fraud attributable to the imprecise standards around what does and doesn’t count as occupancy in a second home. While the DOJ argues that James didn’t seek the suggestion of with the home ample to be an occupant, Fannie Mae pointers don’t specify that a person wants to sleep within the property overnight.

This all aspects to indicators that the indictment is merely revenge for James’s worthwhile fraud suit in opposition to Trump, which made her a lifelong enemy of our mopish president.

“I will no longer bow, I will no longer ruin, I will no longer bend,” James said earlier this month at a rally for Current York’s Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani within the course of her federal indictment. “I will no longer capitulate, I will no longer give in.”

The Trump administration’s desperate are attempting to incriminate her can also merely absorb made doing that a bit earlier.

It appears admire Stephen Miller’s quest to hire 10,000 so-known as “Space of origin Defenders” by January isn’t going so successfully.

At some stage in a multi-agency assembly earlier this week, Miller voiced frustration that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasn’t bringing in deportation officers quick ample, CNN reported Thursday. Within the period in-between, just a few sources told CNN that ICE has struggled to course of the unexpected surge of applicants after the agency dangled a $50,000 signing bonus in entrance of their noses, within the hopes of enticing American citizens to hitch the legion of regulation enforcement officers ripping households aside. 

“It’s a shit screen,” an administration loyal told CNN.

One senior ICE loyal told CNN that “HR is no longer equipped to hire en masse,” along side, “No one has lend a hand employees to lend a hand this.” Truly, the Federal Emergency Administration Agency has had to lend out some personnel to encourage take care of ICE’s influx of applications, which DHS reviews has skyrocketed to 175,000.  

ICE officers are in actuality feeling the stress once fresh recruits intention for the agency’s practising program, where bigger than 200 applicants absorb already been terminated from this technique on yarn of they did no longer meet the physical or tutorial requirements, one source told CNN.

Sources told NBC News Wednesday that just a few fresh recruits had arrived for practising without being successfully vetted, and honest appropriate below 10 had been turned into away attributable to disqualifying prison backgrounds or failed drug making an are attempting out. At ICE’s practising academy in Brunswick, Georgia, employees came across one recruit had previously been alive to on a domestic violence incident, and used to be once charged with proper-arm robbery and battery. DHS officers told NBC News that barely a good deal of recruits within the six-week practising course had no longer submitted their fingerprints for background tests, which is required by ICE. 

CNN reported that in one case, ICE gave a conditional offer to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant, which used to be handiest caught by the DEA. In a single more case, an particular person had a pending gun trace.

These mistakes come as the Trump administration has attempted to scuttle up the onboarding course of, which extinct to grab months, loyal into a partly a ways off course of that handiest takes 47 days, CNN reported. 

Scott Shuchart, ancient head of protection at ICE for the length of the Biden administration, advisable that the Trump administration had gone too a ways in making an are attempting to streamline the technique.“They’re making an are attempting to attain one thing borderline no longer most likely and they’re doing it too quick,” he told CNN. 

Donald Trump has free license to reshape the White Home as he sees fits, in step with his employees.

With no warning, the president razed the White Home’s East Skim this week to invent system for a $300 million ballroom that he claimed may maybe maybe be “100 percent” paid for by himself and his “friends.” 

Because the demo bore on, it turned into decided that what had been at the delivery pitched as a minor growth to one of many most outstanding symbols of American democracy would no longer handiest execute the historic two-yarn addition, which used to be constructed below the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It can maybe maybe moreover overshadow the White Home entirely, with a sq. pictures almost double the scale of the relaxation of the constructing.

Despite public backlash, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down Thursday that the president had entire, unquestionable authority to alter the premises nevertheless he needs, time and again leaning on the supposed allowances of a correct precedent that she did no longer call. 

“The White Home has explained that the motive you didn’t submit state plans to the [National Capital Planning Commission] is on yarn of that commission, along with others, don’t absorb oversight over demolitions, nevertheless handiest over state,” CBS reporter Weijia Jiang said. “So, are you able to encourage us realize—can the president lag down one thing he needs without oversight? Might he waste this constructing or, assert, the Jefferson Memorial?”

“So, it’s no longer the president who came up with that correct notion himself. That’s a correct notion that’s been held by the NCPC for a good deal of years,” Leavitt said, suggesting that handiest vertical state requires the actual approval of the federal planning agency. “There were many presidents within the previous who absorb made their note on this barely White Home complex.”

“It sounds admire the answer is yes, he can lag down no matter he needs?” Jiang pressed. 

“That’s no longer what we’re announcing. That’s a correct notion that’s been held for a good deal of years,” the 27-year-primitive press secretary reiterated. 

“That’s the style you’re interpreting it,” Jiang said. 

“No, it’s one thing that presidents absorb accomplished for years and years,” Leavitt persisted, keeping up pictures of the West Skim’s state in 1902 while condescendingly prompting Jiang to screen where the “rubble” within the photo came from.

The White Home (along with the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court docket) is technically exempt from the Nationwide Ancient Preservation Act, which requires agencies to endure a review course of and discipline public notion earlier than altering historic landmarks. Traditionally, presidents absorb voluntarily submitted state proposals to the NCPC anyway, in a screen of transparency.

However the Trump administration’s rationale for bulldozing previous presidential precedent and public expectation moreover flagrantly ignores the reality that any major challenge on the White Home grounds, such as tearing down walls or fresh state, requires congressional approval and a lengthy approval course of to proceed.

The destruction is a miles shout from what Trump had proposed when he first floated the foundation of constructing a ballroom on the White Home grounds. At some stage within the preliminary announcement in July, Trump claimed that his challenge “received’t intervene with the hot constructing. It received’t be. It’ll be intention it nevertheless no longer touching it.”

Past the big overhaul, the sitting president doesn’t seem like a mountainous fan of the nationwide image. At some stage in his first term, Trump reportedly known as the White Home “a dump” (an allegation that he has publicly refuted), and he has spent no puny part of his second term residing and eating at his non-public properties pretty than the executive mansion.

It’s no longer decided whether the Nationwide Capital Planning Price used to be consulted or got any major perception ahead of the White Home’s demolition, in particular as it has been closed for the explanation that authorities shut down 23 days within the past.

“The selections had been made in total secrecy and undertaken without public disclosure or correct session,”  the ranking people on the Home Oversight and Pure Sources committees and the subcommittee on vitality on mineral property wrote Trump in a letter Thursday. “The American of us deserve pudgy transparency relating to the enormous demolition, preparation, and state at the White Home for the length of a authorities shutdown, in particular when it considerations alterations to one of our nation’s most historically major buildings.”

Donald Trump has been gratified now to no longer deploy federal troops to the city of San Francisco, as he has in barely a good deal of cities across the country. 

In a Reality Social put up Thursday afternoon, Trump wrote that he used to be persuaded by a mobile phone call with San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and conversations with tech exchange leaders such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff. 

“They absorb to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we is no longer going to surge San Francisco on Saturday. Protect tuned!” Trump’s put up learn.  

The put up confirms a assertion from Lurie Thursday morning that Trump assured him he “used to be calling off any plans for a federal deployment in San Francisco.” Last month, Trump named the city as one of many locations where he planned to deploy the U.S. defense pressure for “practising,” and on Wednesday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the administration planned to ship 100 federal brokers, along side from the Crawl Guard and Customs and Border Protection, there within days. 

These plans seem like on protect for now, attributable to Trump’s tech baron allies talking him out of focusing on San Francisco as he has barely a good deal of cities across The united states, along side Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Town may maybe maybe also absorb benefited from the reality that unlike the barely a good deal of cities Trump has focused, it doesn’t absorb a Dark mayor. 

Whatever the reasoning, California’s Bay Space has momentarily been spared from Trump’s heavy-handed federal brokers, a shock brooding about that California governor (and ancient San Francisco mayor) Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a chronic Trump critic. Presumably barely a good deal of cities will absorb to are attempting to persuade a successfully off tech CEO or two to retain the president from siccing his brokers on them. 

Home Democrats absorb formally begun an investigation into President Trump’s brazen strive at a $230 million payout from his non-public Justice Division.

The probe is led by Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia.

“If either of your claims had any merit, you’ve taken them to court by now and litigated them publicly,” wrote Raskin and Garcia, the tip Democrats on the Home Oversight and Judiciary committees. “You did no longer attain that. As a replacement, you waited till you turned into President and installed your handpicked loyalists at DOJ, vivid that you just would also declare them to co-signal your interrogate notes in secret within the support of closed doorways, and then you definately can also level to the notes to the U.S. Treasury for icy anxious cash courtesy of the American taxpayer. That isn’t justice, it’s a ways theft.”

The president is seeking reimbursement for DOJ investigations into Russian election interference and Russian ties to Trump’s 2016 advertising campaign, as successfully as for the 2022 FBI search of Mar-a-Lago for labeled paperwork. Trump made the claims in 2023 and 2024, nevertheless now his non-public DOJ is guilty of resolving the matter. The $230 million payout would come from taxpayer funds.

Republicans, nevertheless, don’t seem to be too tremulous relating to the excessive ranges of most likely fraud and corruption associated with an unprecedented circulation admire this.

“I don’t know the details about that, I’ve honest appropriate learn it, I didn’t talk with him about that,” Home Speaker Mike Johnson answered when requested relating to the payout on Wednesday. “I know that he believes he’s owed that reimbursement. What I heard the day prior to this used to be if he receives it, he used to be gonna heart of attention on about giving it to charity, he doesn’t want these proceeds.”

Donald Trump is outwardly so satisfied with the ballroom he’s constructing at the White Home that he doesn’t want anyone to see the state in progress. 

On Thursday, the Secret Carrier closed off fetch admission to to the Ellipse park, where journalists had been taking pictures and video of the demolition of the White Home’s East Skim. Both CNN and Reuters photojournalists had to circulation away the residence, in step with CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

Photos of the continuing destruction of a major a part of the White Home seem to absorb introduced on ample of a backlash that Trump is making an are attempting to retain the public from seeing them. It’s easy to see why: Trump previously claimed that the ballroom would lead to no demolition of any a part of the White Home, and uncared for the usual correct course of for making any changes to the constructing. 

The ballroom itself goes to be a garish 90,000-sq.-foot state pudgy of Trump’s trademark gold decor. Long previous may maybe be a visitor entrance as successfully as offices for the principle lady’s employees and barely a good deal of White Home employees. A majority of American citizens are opposed to the demolition, nevertheless White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt has known as the backlash “unfounded outrage.” She  claims that Trump is doing what barely a good deal of presidents absorb handiest dreamed of, announcing “he used to be reelected support to this of us’s rental on yarn of he’s upright at constructing things.” 

While Trump claims that the ballroom state isn’t being paid for by taxpayer funds, that’s no longer reassuring: $300 million in donations is coming from the president’s successfully off friends, allies, and firms making an are attempting to curry settle on with his administration. That cash may maybe be in point of fact appropriate a bribe. 

Now the Trump administration is making an are attempting to camouflage the potentially unlawful destruction and state from records protection, and while that received’t invent the yarn and photos go, nothing will or most likely would be accomplished now that a big chunk of the White Home is gone. Future occupants of the Oval Space of enterprise will now inherit a big ballroom that no person requested for. 

Donald Trump honest appropriate pardoned a crypto prison who’s making the president’s family richer, in step with an distinctive Wall Boulevard Journal file Thursday.

After months of lobbying the Trump administration, the president signed a presidential pardon Wednesday for Changpeng Zhao, the founder and ancient chief executive of Binance, the enviornment’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

“The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over,” launched White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt. However is one more war on American customers honest appropriate origin?

Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 for failing to protect up an anti-money-laundering program at Binance, earning him a four-month penal complex sentence. Binance Holdings Runt agreed to pay the USA $4 billion to resolve an investigation into violations linked to the Bank Secrecy Act, failure to register as a money-transmitting enterprise, and the World Emergency Financial Powers Act.

Why would Trump pardon Zhao? Seemingly on yarn of he helped line the Trump family’s pockets via his lend a hand of World Liberty Monetary, or WLFI, the decentralized finance platform that is majority-owned by a Trump enterprise entity.

Binance has time and again boosted and incentivized the usage of USD1, WLFI’s proper coin, which is a cryptocurrency that maintains a trace of $1. Binance equipped WLFI its first major boon in Might moreover when the platform accredited a shady $2 billion funding from Abu Dhabi–based mostly MGX made in Trump’s proper coin. The announcement followed an April assembly between Zachary Witkoff, son of particular U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, who is a “promoter” of WLFI, and Zhao in Abu Dhabi where they discussed USD1.

The Wall Boulevard Journal reported in March that representatives from the president’s family met with Zhao to focus on a most likely stake in Binance.US, the corporate’s American arm, which has been carefully restricted attributable to regulatory disorders. The corporate had first reached out to the president’s allies supreme year, making an are attempting to strike a deal to declare the exiled agency support to the USA.

Current York Metropolis’s second mayoral debate did no longer pan out successfully for disgraced ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, least of all when one of his accusers emerged from the group to advisable a seek records from.

Charlotte Bennett used to be the second of 13 females to accuse Cuomo of sexually harassing them for the length of his time in office. Bennett worked as an executive assistant and successfully being protection adviser within the Cuomo administration, nevertheless left after the governor requested several unwelcome questions about her intercourse existence and if she “had ever been with an older man.”

Bennett sued Cuomo in 2022 nevertheless finally dropped the case. In April, she agreed to receive a settlement claim tied to separate litigation relating to Cuomo’s alleged harassment. However Cuomo has since said that he would sue Bennett for defamation, successfully silencing her for the length of the mayoral shuffle.

Bennett used to be curiously invited to the debate hall Wednesday night by Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and her presence pressured one of Cuomo’s most base scandals to heart stage.

“You sought to fetch admission to her deepest gynecological info,” Mamdani said, referring to actions that Cuomo’s correct personnel undertook as a part of his defense. “She cannot talk up for herself on yarn of you lodged a defamation case in opposition to her. I, nevertheless, can talk.

“What attain you assert to the 13 females that you just sexually pressured?” Mamdani pressed, turning to face Cuomo as the group roared.

Despite months of bankrolled debate prep that rapid proved nugatory, the usual governor’s answer used to be remarkably underwhelming.

“Uh—if you may want to must be in authorities, then it’s mandatory to be serious and used,” Cuomo stammered, earlier than noting that he had by no technique been came across criminally or civilly accountable for his alleged behavior.

Continuing the takedown of Cuomo into the next day, Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa followed up with his non-public zinger, telling journalists Thursday morning that “if you’re below 30, Cuomo’s the least bit times flirty.”

Andrew Cuomo’s advertising campaign for mayor of Current York Metropolis is no longer going successfully. In polls, he repeatedly trails the entrance-runner and Democratic nominee, Current York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. And on Wednesday night, he used to be on the receiving stop of blistering attacks for the length of the supreme debate of the mayoral shuffle.

How did Cuomo answer the next morning? By making an offensive and bigoted 9/11 joke about Mamdani, a Muslim.

The ancient Current York governor used to be on the WABC radio screen Sid and Chums within the Morning, and requested host Sid Rosenberg, “God forbid, one more 9/11—are you able to imagine Mamdani within the seat?”

“He’d be cheering,” Rosenberg answered, to which Cuomo answered, “That’s one more difficulty.”

It’s one thing to advise Mamdani lacks the trip to tackle a major crisis admire a terrorist attack. It’s barely one more to insinuate that the Democratic nominee would cheer on a horrific tragedy to the city he’d be main, with a nod toward Islamophobia within the technique. And the radio screen is no longer even the principle occasion of Cuomo accomplishing bigotry in opposition to Mamdani.

On Wednesday, correct earlier than the debate, the Cuomo advertising campaign rapid posted and deleted an AI-generated video exhibiting “criminals” supporting Mamdani’s advertising campaign, along side a drunk driver, domestic abuser, and a Dark man wearing a keffiyeh shoplifting.

It’s barely decided the Cuomo advertising campaign is getting desperate within the supreme weeks of the mayoral shuffle. Mamdani has managed to fetch lend a hand from the city’s diverse communities, and Cuomo’s itsy-bitsy joke can also merely place him support additional in his are attempting to drum up lend a hand for his flagging advertising campaign.

Hearken to Cuomo’s interview with Rosenberg at WABC radio’s internet page (the “joke” is at the 21-minute note).

Home Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t heart of attention on he’s doing one thing coarse by blocking off the deciding signature on a bipartisan petition for a vote to free up the Jeffrey Epstein info in pudgy.

Talking on CNBC Thursday morning, Johnson denied Democratic Consultant-elect Adelita Grijalva’s claim that she used to be unable to delivery constituent work on yarn of she lacks a funds, an office in her district, or even a badge allowing her fetch admission to to Capitol Hill. However the Louisiana Republican insisted that wouldn’t matter, anyway.

“She has pc systems and 16 employees, and there’s no excuse for it,” Johnson snapped.

Johnson moreover rejected the suggestion that he used to be in a method blocking off the free up of the authorities’s info on Epstein, on yarn of in his ogle, the details had been already coming out.

“The Epstein info are being released,” Johnson claimed, pointing to the most up-to-date batch of paperwork obtained by the Home Oversight Committee on Friday, which he said included Epstein’s monetary ledgers, day-to-day calendar, and flight logs.

“Your entire things of us were announcing they wanted. It’s all coming out. Why? Because the Home Oversight Committee has been working via this period,” Johnson said.

“These are all distractions. All distractions from the principle level. They’ve shut the authorities down for political purposes, and we gotta fetch it reopened,” Johnson persisted.

Basically the most up-to-date free up included testimony from Alex Acosta, ancient U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who permitted a nonprosecution deal for Epstein in 2008, allowing him to lead decided of federal costs no matter enormous evidence of intercourse trafficking and abuse of minors. Acosta, who had previously served as Donald Trump’s secretary of labor, defended his decision to lawmakers. “A billionaire going to penal complex sends a proper signal to the community that here’s no longer, no longer correct, that this cannot occur,” he said Friday.

Last month, Democrats on the Home Oversight and Reform Committee released excerpts of flight logs and day-to-day schedules exhibiting that Epstein had vacation plans with Elon Musk, held conferences with Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon, and flew around with Prince Andrew.

Outdated story dumps were more underwhelming. Democrats on the Home Oversight Committee came across that 97 percent of paperwork included in a September free up of 33,000 pages had already been made public, and one journalist at the Miami Herald famed that the dump contained just a few duplicates of primitive reviews.