David Edwards has spent over a decade reporting on social justice, human rights and politics for Raw Story. He also writes Crooks and Liars. He has a background in enterprise resource planning and previously managed the network infrastructure for the North Carolina Department of Correction.
President Donald Trump touring border wall prototypes in San Diego with then-acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan. CBP photo by Ralph Desio.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) revealed on Tuesday that President Donald Trump has threatened to shut down the U.S. government if his demand for funding a wall on the Mexico border is not met.
Capito reportedly made the remarks on MetroNews' TalkLine program.
According to the Republican senator, Trump said that he would consider a government shutdown “if [funding is] not robust enough.”
“I told him that I didn’t think a shutdown benefited anybody -- him, us or the American people," Capito explained. "He can have his own opinion on it I guess.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) also disagreed with Trump's shutdown threat, Capito said.
Politico reported that Trump lost his temper during the meeting with Capito and Shelby.
Conservative pollster Frank Luntz broke the fourth wall to warn New York Attorney General Letitia James to hold off seizing Trump's stuff.
"And I say this to the Attorney General right now," he said, aiming his right index finger into the CNN studio camera. "If you play politics on this, this is what the Secretary of State did in Colorado and what they did in I believe Maine -- his numbers went up in both states."
"I don't understand. I'm almost speechless. And how pathetic the opposition to Trump has been, and how completely misguided — this is a perfect example of it."
Luntz had been poised to discuss his thoughts about what the political results would be should the former president be unable to find company willing to underwrite his $464 million bond that was set by a New York judge as damages for he and his company The Trump Organization committing widespread fraud for years to win favorable deals and loans.
Already, New York officials have entered the judgment from Trump's civil fraud trial in Manhattan with the county clerk's office in Westchester easing the way for James to seize Trump National Golf Course in Briarcliff Manor and his private estate of Seven Springs in Bedford, if he comes up short of securing the bond while he appeals.
By mentioning Colorado and Maine, Luntz was referencing the two state secretaries that had a hand in different processes of booting Trump off the GOP primary ballot, before he was reinstated.
For Luntz, it is pure political suicide for the Democrats to revel during Trump's financially vulnerable hour.
"I want you to remember this moment and don't forget it: if the New York Attorney General starts to take his homes away, starts to seize his assets so it's all going to be on-camera, and pundits are going to sit and scream about this — 'This man cannot be elected!' — you're going to create the greatest victimhood of 2024, and you're going to elect Donald Trump."
He went further.
"If they take his stuff, he's going to say 'That this is proof that the federal government and the establishment in the swamp and Washington and all the politicians across the country and the attorney generals and all of this that this is a conspiracy to deny him the presidency," Luntz said.
If this happens, the pollster predicts it will earn him empathy from the American people and give him enough juice to win come November 5.
"He's going to go up in the polls, just like he went up every single time they indicted him... The indictment let's not talk about whether it's justified or not, but it will prove the things that he's saying on the campaign trail and he will go up and he may just get elected president. Do not forget that."
Former President Donald Trump is finally going to be forced to open his real books and show the world his true financial workings, biographer Tim O'Brien told MSNBC's Ali Velshi on Thursday, as New York Attorney General Letitia James prepares to seize assets to cover his $464 million judgment for civil fraud.
"I think now you see at least on a financial basis, he is getting exposed for decades of what he has been doing, which is inflating, lying, exaggerating and however you want to describe it how much money he has and what he does with that," said O'Brien. "I think that is one of the things gnawing at him more than anything else in this current round is that the emperor has no financial clothing. He said in a deposition a year ago that he had $400 million in cash on hand and adding to that amount on a monthly basis and in significant ways. He either lied under oath or perjured himself on that position, or he is a really bad businessman, or blew through that somehow magically over the last year, or doesn't want to touch it because he wants to lay these debts off on, perhaps, people donating to his campaign and for whatever reason that money he says isn't there now. So he is going to have to rely on the good graces of other people and he doesn't have a lot of options."
Regarding the rumors he could file for bankruptcy, O'Brien continued, "I think we would've gotten indications of that and it would have to be a complex filing. And I think Letitia James is waiting to attach his assets on Monday. She has been very sharp, I think, about specifically naming some of the properties that she would want to attach."
"The reality is, there are certain properties that he deeply prizes," said O'Brien. "In the early 90s, when he went through those six corporate bankruptcies, he came within an inch of personal bankruptcy, but for a piece of his father's estate that his siblings gave him so he could stay solvent. Otherwise, he would have gone under personally. At that time he got on his knees to his bankers and said, take what you want but don't take my condo or take Mar-a-Lago. I think the attorney general's office is hip to the idea that there are certain toys more valuable to Trump than others, and I think that's got to be gnawing at him as well."
"Even if there's not a bankruptcy filing, he will have to have very detailed proclamations within the filing about his assets and the debts held against those assets and, again, a kind of public revelation about what he has that he never wanted to do, because what it will show in the end is a guy who said when you watched his campaign in 2015, I am really rich and I'm worth $10 billion, I'm worth $8 billion, I'm worth $6 billion, and these are all the numbers and he is nowhere close to that, and he doesn't want to pop his own balloon in that regard, but he's probably going to be forced to."
The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case is making decisions that are drawing scathing rebukes. And they may earn her a recusal.
U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump before he left office, this week ordered defense lawyers and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's team to file their own version of submissions breaking down instructions they would offer to instruct a jury around competing interpretations of the Presidential Records Act (PRA).
Trump’s defense in the case has cited the PRA granting the 45th president the right to keep classified documents, which he took from the White House to be tucked away at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Appearing on CNN, Trump's former attorney Ty Cobb was utterly mystified by the move to the point that he is convinced that Cannon is likely going to be bucked from the bench.
"This is a remarkable misunderstanding of the applicable law it's embarrassing," he told Erin Burnett. "She's been struggling so dramatically in this case ever since the start when she was she butchered the Special Master decision and the 11th Circuit took her to task for it."
"This is a total totally baffling position."
The 11th Circuit, a body above Cannon's jurisdiction, overruled Cannon and stated that she “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” regarding the Special Master exploration.
The Special Master reversal was just one of the moves she's made that Cobb believes shows brazen bias toward Trump.
"... She appears to believe that the Presidential Records Act is actually consequential in the case which it is not," he said. "This is an Espionage Act case; this is not a presidential records violation."
Cobb then tries his hand at correcting Cannon, censuring her for even considering the alternative theories.
"That this case is the theory that Trump has the ability to designate classified material as personal records is absurd on his fix," he said. "There is no legal support for that, but she has put Jack Smith in a position of trying to draft jury instructions and advance that would posit that question to the jury."
He then knocked the judge for this time waste.
"I think that it is such a fundamental error and it is it is so to reflective of bias that it does provide a basis you know, not a dispositive basis, but it does provide a basis for seeking her recusal."