Login
Former President Donald Trump’s campaign donation page crashed Thursday within minutes of the jury returning a guilty verdict.
Shortly after the verdict, the page displayed a 500 error stating “something went wrong.” Trump also received massive influxes of cash from major donors after the verdict, including $300,000 from Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.
“The timing isn’t a coincidence,” Maguire wrote on X. In the past, Sequoia Capital employees have donated to both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, as well as the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, according to Open Secrets.
Trump’s campaign wrote on X that “the American people see through Crooked Joe Biden’s rigged show trial.”
“So many Americans were moved to donate to President Trump’s campaign that the WinRed pages went down,” the campaign said.
I just donated $300k to President Trump
— Shaun Maguire (@shaunmmaguire) May 30, 2024
The timing isn't a coincidence https://t.co/LDU4nJ8FBx
The jury convicted Trump on all 34 counts of falsifying business records charged in the indictment brought by Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Trump is set to be sentenced on July 11.
WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE!https://t.co/KojPKxsxaD https://t.co/LylEZV7zJb
— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) May 30, 2024
New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin also wrote on X after the verdict that he just “secured a $800k donation from someone for President Trump’s Joint Fundraising Committee.”
“Never experienced a massive ask that easy,” he wrote.
The Trump campaign and WinRed did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The post Trump Campaign Gets Immediate Avalanche of Cash After Guilty Verdict appeared first on The Daily Signal.
A Manhattan jury found former President Donald Trump guilty Thursday on all 34 charges of falsifying business records to hide “hush money” payments in 2016 to former pornographic movie actress Stormy Daniels.
Upon leaving the courthouse, Trump called the trial a disgrace and said, “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who is corrupt.” He continued: “The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people.”
Trump faces up to four years in prison.
BREAKING: Donald Trump says the "real verdict" will be decided on election day November 5th, 2024, calls out George Soros after being found guilty.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 30, 2024
"It's okay, I'm fighting for our country… I'm fighting for our constitution."
Trump also called out President Biden, saying the… pic.twitter.com/3QibqBSCrt
Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts issued a statement on the conviction:
This verdict is a travesty to our republic. This was a bogus prosecution engineered by President Biden and his weaponized DOJ that has made the New York justice system look like that of a third-world country where government officials engage in partisan prosecutions against their political opponents.
(Read the rest of Roberts’ statement here.)
The Heritage Foundation launched The Daily Signal in 2014.
The Biden campaign put out a statement saying that “no one is above the law.”
Biden-Harris Campaign Statement on Today’s Verdict pic.twitter.com/TEmdNsPmzP
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 30, 2024
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in a statement that the verdict represents a “dark day” in America:
This is a dark day for America. This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution. The only reason they prosecuted Donald Trump is because Democrats are terrified that he will win reelection. This disgraceful decision is legally baseless and should be overturned promptly on appeal. Any judge with a modicum of integrity would recognize that this entire trial has been utterly fraudulent.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said in a statement on X that a guilty verdict never would have been reached if Trump wasn’t the person being charged.
Today’s verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved: a leftist prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in America—all in an effort to “get” Donald Trump.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 30, 2024
That…
MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy organization, called the verdict a “small degree of justice” in a statement:
Today, a jury concluded that Donald Trump broke the law. This verdict represents a small degree of justice against Trump and his enablers and now millions of MoveOn members will keep up their work to guarantee he loses at the ballot box, too.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., the No. 4 Republican in the House, said the verdict demonstrates that the nation’s legal system under President Joe Biden is “rigged.”
My statement on the rigged verdict in the New York City Biden Trial against President Trump:
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) May 30, 2024
“Today’s verdict shows how corrupt, rigged, and unAmerican the weaponized justice system has become under Joe Biden and Democrats. I fully support President Trump appealing this decision…
Before beginning to deliberate on a verdict Wednesday, the 12-member jury received unusual instructions in Manhattan Criminal Court from Judge Juan Merchan, as Fox News’ John Roberts reported on X.
Judge Merchan just told the jury that they do not need unanimity to convict. 4 could agree on one crime, 4 on a different one, and the other 4 on another. He said he would treat 4-4-4 as a unanimous verdict.
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) May 29, 2024
The former president spoke to reporters and onlookers Tuesday outside the court before closing arguments in his trial.
Tiffany Trump makes her first appearance at the sham Trump trial.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) May 28, 2024
Don Jr, Eric, Lara, Michael Boulos (Tiffany's husband), Steve Witkoff, Will Scharf, and Deroy Murdock are also in attendance.pic.twitter.com/mrn6aDNThV
Also before those closing arguments, actor and liberal activist Robert De Niro showed up at the courthouse to denounce Trump and his supporters and express his own support for Biden.
The Democrats parade a washed up actor, Robert De Niro, outside of Trump's trial, a man who has spewed vile, pejorative-filled poison at Trump multiple times, and now he's upset Trump supporters are shouting at him in protest?!
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 28, 2024
De Niro is a unhinged, entitled maniac. pic.twitter.com/Ar9A0f60dS
Inside the courtroom during closing arguments, Trump’s lawyer argued that the prosecution had failed to come up with any evidence that Trump committed a crime.
“President Trump is innocent,” defense attorney Todd Blanche said. “He did not commit any crimes, and the district attorney has not met their burden of proof, period.”
Blanche was referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat.
Trump’s attorney also pointed to the prosecution’s star witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, as an unreliable witness with a history of lying.
“You cannot send someone to prison based on the words of Michael Cohen,” Blanche told the jury.
Merchan, the judge, reprimanded Blanche for this remark, calling it “outrageous” and “highly inappropriate.”
The prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, rested his case by arguing that Trump’s defense was built on deception.
“The name of the game was concealment and all roads lead to the man who benefited most, the defendant, Donald Trump,” Steinglass said.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
The post Political World Erupts After Jury Declares Trump Guilty on All 34 Counts appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who brought racketeering charges against former President Donald Trump and his political allies, won her Democratic primary Tuesday in the face of scandal.
Meanwhile, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, presiding over the Fulton County case against Trump, also won his race—just two months after his ruling allowed Willis to continue with the case, despite the fact that she was in an undisclosed relationship with the lawyer she had hired to prosecute Trump.
These local races gained national attention not only because of the Trump case, but because of personal and professional scandal surrounding Willis over the revelations of her affair with Nathan Wade, the man she hired as special prosecutor to go after Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The judge made what was considered a mixed ruling in March that the Trump case could go forward only if Willis or Wade recused themselves. So, Wade left the case.
On Tuesday, Willis defeated Christian Wise Smith, a former county prosecutor who previously unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Georgia attorney general in 2022. He also previously lost to Willis in the Fulton County Democrat primary for district attorney in 2020.
The Associated Press called the race at 7:31 p.m.
BREAKING: Fani Willis wins the Democratic Party primary in Georgia for District Attorney, Atlanta Judicial Circuit. #APRaceCall at 7:31 p.m. EDT.
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) May 21, 2024
In the upcoming November general election, Willis now faces Courtney Kramer, a lawyer who didn’t have a challenger in the Republican primary for district attorney in the heavily Democratic jurisdiction made up primarily of Atlanta.
Willis was first elected in 2020. She has faced controversies beyond the Trump case that include the prosecution of rapper Young Thug and complaints by the liberal American Civil Liberties Union about living conditions in the Fulton County Jail.
The Associated Press called the race for McAfee shortly before 8 p.m.
McAfee faced Robert Patillo II, a Georgia civil rights lawyer and radio host. One candidate for the judgeship, defense attorney Tiffani Johnson, was disqualified but was fighting the disqualification, according to The New York Times.
Judicial races in Georgia are nonpartisan. McAfee is a former state inspector general appointed to the bench by Gov. Brian Kemp in December 2022 to fill a vacancy.
The Willis-Wade controversy came up after one of the defendants—former Trump White House and campaign aide Michael Roman—filed a legal motion asking for both to be disqualified from the case.
Willis hired Wade in November 2021 for $250 per hour. Wade has billed Willis’ office for more than $650,000 in legal work. Wade and Willis went on several vacations, cruises, and flights to destinations that included Belize, Aruba, and the Bahamas, which raised accusations that Willis personally benefited from the financial arrangement.
Trump and Roman were among 19 people charged under the state’s Racketeering Influencing and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, in August 2023 by a Fulton County grand jury for challenging the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
McAfee determined in March that the Trump allies hadn’t shown an actual conflict of interest with Willis employing Wade but said, “the established record “highlights a significant appearance of impropriety that infect the current structure of the prosecution team.”
The post Georgia’s Democratic Voters Render Their Verdict on Fani Willis appeared first on The Daily Signal.
It is a presidential election year, and a leading candidate for president of the United States, who also happens to be a former president of the United States, is currently a criminal defendant chained to a dingy courtroom four days of the week—time that he should be spending interacting with voters out on the campaign trail.
That’s terrible. But it’s only the beginning.
The daughter of the presiding judge is a professional political operative for the presidential candidate’s opposition party, and the candidate himself is subject to an over-inclusive and unconstitutional gag order.
The George Soros-funded district attorney, who campaigned on a platform of prosecuting that candidate, only pressed charges after his own left-wing predecessor opted not to do so due to the frivolous nature of the charges. One of the Soros-funded district attorney’s subordinates curiously joined his team—just in time to prosecute the candidate—from a high-ranking perch in the Department of Justice that is headed by the candidate’s chief political rival.
And this week, the candidate was subjected to tawdry and salacious testimony from a discredited former porn star, who spoke openly in court about how she “blacked out” during their alleged 2006 sexual encounter. Due to the sprawling gag order, the candidate was not—and is not—legally permitted to defend his honor and contest her lurid, legally irrelevant claims.
Welcome to our American banana republic.
America has many real, glaring problems on its hands. Inflation remains stubborn, and Americans widely report feeling pessimistic about the economy, despite nominal low unemployment metrics. Our wide-open southern border is disastrous, leading to artificially suppressed working-class wages and the most rampant illegal alien crime in the nation’s history. Violent and property crime rates remain too high, especially in large urban corridors. Energy prices should be considerably lower, and they would be if our moronic leaders allowed producers to tap into America’s great natural wellspring of hydrocarbons.
Around the world, hostile regimes act against our interests in unrestrained and revanchist fashion. At home, childlessness, godlessness, anxiety, and depression are all rising, symptomatic of a broader civilizational rot and a society that has lost confidence in what it claims to stand for.
Amidst all this, it would be ideal to have a normal, competitive presidential race in which the flailing incumbent is directly confronted and his record is challenged for all to see. But Americans are now being deprived of anything remotely resembling a normal presidential race. Donald Trump is physically chained down to Judge Juan Merchan’s New York courtroom, unable to get out on the campaign trail and deliver his signature rallies to adoring fans across the heartland.
These often-forgotten Americans are, in a quite literal sense, denied the opportunity to hear the full argument against the Biden Regime due to these insidious workings of the Democrat-lawfare complex.
Instead of permitting the Regime’s challenger, Trump, to campaign for votes in Wisconsin, he is forced to silently endure the unhinged courtroom musings of a literal porn star and a convicted felon (Michael Cohen)—all in furtherance of a case that suffers from insuperable statute of limitations problems in addition to the structural absurdity of a local district attorney (the Soros-funded Alvin Bragg) prosecuting and attempting to prove a federal crime (a campaign finance violation).
Oh, and if Trump doesn’t shut up and keep quiet, Merchan might throw him in jail—as he has repeatedly threatened to do, if Trump keeps violating his unconstitutional gag order.
What a sick, cruel joke it all is.
Democrats seem not to have given any thought to what happens if they lose. If Trump wins, do Democrats seriously not expect him to respond in kind? Now that the Rubicon has been crossed and we have entered a world in which politicians attempt to not merely defeat their opposition at the ballot box but also prosecute and incarcerate them, there is no going back.
Just as Senate Democrats’ November 2013 invocation of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster for lower-court nominees directly led to Republicans doing the same for Supreme Court nominees just a few years later, so, too, is it impossible to know what may ultimately come from the lawfare precedent Democrats are setting today.
The new rules have been established. Many of us didn’t want these rules, but here we are anyway. So, game on.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
The post The Making of an American Banana Republic appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Years before the prosecution called the former porn star to testify Tuesday in Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial in Manhattan, Democrats viewed Stormy Daniels as an avenue for impeaching Trump when he was president.
My 2020 book “Abuse of Power” details the origins of Left’s lawfare against Trump, which began immediately after his 2016 election to the presidency.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, led the first criminal case against Trump, followed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and two federal prosecutions by special counsel Jack Smith.
Indicted in four separate criminal cases for a total of 91 counts, Trump got some good news Tuesday when a federal judge in Florida postponed indefinitely his trial in the classified documents case, one of Smith’s.
Below is an adapted excerpt from “Abuse of Power”:
It’s funny how “legal experts” who would pop up working for Democrats were talking and writing about Trump’s demise for other reasons months earlier.
Two lawyers whom the House Judiciary Committee hired for impeachment, Norman Eisen and Barry Berke, wrote a New York Times opinion piece along with Noah Bookbinder, also a lawyer, with the headline: “Is This the Beginning of the End for Trump?”
The lawyers suggested Trump could be taken down for a possible campaign finance violation tied to alleged flings with former porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal.
Or, as the lawyers characterized it in their Times piece, federal prosecutors determined that “Mr. Trump, the Trump Organization, and the campaign were all directly involved in an illegal scheme to silence two women who claimed they had affairs with Mr. Trump.”
The lawyers’ op-ed in the Times further says Trump “could be named as an unindicted co-conspirator” or “charged if he leaves office before the statute of limitations runs out (most likely in 2022).”
Still, regarding the hush money [for Daniels and McDougal], even House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi had said after the news of Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s planned guilty plea that it wasn’t grounds for impeachment, even as some of her members were pushing for that.
“Impeachment has to spring from something else. If and when the information emerges about that, we’ll see,” Pelosi said in 2018. “It’s not a priority on the agenda going forward unless something else comes forward.”
But impeachment was a priority for members of the House Democratic Caucus, which she led.
In December 2018, when Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance violation for paying hush money to Daniels, the plea agreement referred to “Individual 1” as directing him to do so. It was clear that this individual was Trump.
Cohen also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and other financial crimes and was sentenced to three years in prison. He later pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In late 2019, with Democrats in control of the House, many of the hardliners in Pelosi’s caucus were pushing the speaker to go beyond Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as grounds for impeachment.
Democrats in the House Progressive Caucus wanted to include the ambiguous obstruction arguments from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the discredited Trump-Russia claims, the campaign finance allegation in the Stormy Daniels case, the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and potentially other matters. By this point, the House had launched 12 separate investigations into Trump.
But after initial resistance, Pelosi had already caved once to the members demanding Trump’s impeachment on the Ukrainian phone call. The other matters would only prolong the process.
Trump admitted he and Zelenskyy talked about Joe Biden. Now, Democrats just had to turn it into an impeachable case.
Nevertheless, keeping swing district House Democrats in the loop was one reason why, early in the process, leadership had considered progressives’ demands for a “kitchen sink” impeachment involving Russia, Stormy Daniels, emoluments, and anything else they could think of.
This would allow moderate Democrats to go home and say they had voted against some articles of impeachment while still voting to oust Trump in order to appease the base and avoid a potential primary challenger from the left. In the age of MAGA and #Resistance voters, primary challenges are a forefront concern for incumbents on both sides.
During the impeachment hearing, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee called former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch to testify.
As with other witnesses, Yovanovitch’s legal counsel was steeped in Democratic politics. Lawrence S. Robbins represented both Republican and Democrat clients.
But in a December 2018 op-ed for Politico, Robbins called for either impeaching or prosecuting Trump for campaign finance violation regarding the Daniels hush money.
Robbins wrote: “The Department of Justice’s description of the role of Individual 1—the president himself—leaves no doubt that career Justice Department prosecutors regard Trump as a full blown co-conspirator. And most serious-minded criminal lawyers agree that, if these allegations are true, the president, but for his day job, would have been sitting in the dock with his long-time fixer.”
Robbins further wrote that Trump would use his office as president to shield himself from prosecution, so “Congress would surely have no choice but to hold him accountable in the way prescribed by the Constitution.”
That way, of course, was impeachment.
The post How the Left Tried to Use Stormy Daniels to Impeach Trump appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Vaunce News 