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A conservative lawyer who aided former President Donald Trumps efforts to undo the 2020 election results and who has been repeatedly referenced in House hearings on the January 6assault on the Capitol said on Monday that federal agents seized his cellphone last week.

John Eastman said the agents took his phone as he left a restaurant last Wednesday evening, the same day law enforcement officials conducted similar activity around the country as part of broadening investigations into efforts by Trump allies to overturn the election results in an unsuccessful bid to keep the Republican president in power.

Eastman said the agents who approached him identified themselves as from the FBI but appeared to be serving a warrant on behalf of the justice departments office of inspector general, which he contends has no jurisdiction to investigate him since he has never worked for the department.

The action was disclosed in a filing in federal court in New Mexico in which Eastman challenges the legitimacy of the warrant, calling it overly broad, and asks that a court force the federal government to return his phone. The filing does not specify where exactly agents seized his phone, and a lawyer for Eastman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Federal agents last week served a raft of subpoenas related to a scheme by Trump allies to put forward fake slates of electors in hopes of invalidating the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Also that day, agents searched the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, a Trump justice department official who encouraged Trumps challenges of the election results.

A spokeswoman for the inspector generals office declined to comment. Eastman, who last year resigned his position as a law professor at Chapman University, has been a central figure in the ongoing hearings by the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol, though he has not been among the witnesses to testify.

The committee has heard testimony about how Eastman put forward a last-ditch, unorthodox proposal challenging the workings of the 130-year-old Electoral Count Act, which governs the process for tallying the election results in Congress.

The committee has heard testimony about how Eastman pushed for vice-president Mike Pence to deviate from his ceremonial role and halt the certification of the electoral votes, a step Pence had no legal power to take and refused to attempt.

Eastmans plan was to have the states send alternative slates of electors from states Trump was disputing, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

With competing slates for Trump or Biden, Pence would be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to sort it out, under the plan.

A lawyer for Pence, Greg Jacob, detailed for the committee at a hearing earlier this month how he had fended off Eastmans pressure. The panel played video showing Eastman repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while being interviewed by the committee.

Eastman later sought to be on the pardon list, according to an email he sent to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, shared by the committee.

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Feds seize phone of ex-Trump lawyer who aided effort to overturn election - The Guardian US

Nearly two years after losing the election, Donald Trump continues to collect money from his supporters.

Donald Trump never stopped raising funds from his supporters after the 2020 presidential race. His companies, meanwhile, continued to charge his political outfits for goods and services. As a result, the former president has been able to convert about $1.3 million of donor money into business revenue since he lost the 2020 election, according to a review of the latest federal filings.

In the months immediately following the election, much of the money came via Trumps official campaign committee, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. On December 1, 2020, the committee paid $38,000 in rent to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the entity through which the former president owns space inside Trump Tower. Fifteen days later, another $38,000 of rent moved from the campaign committee to that same LLC. The committee also made two payments of $3,000 at about the same time to an entity named Trump Restaurants LLC. The former president, who is worth an estimated $3 billion, also owns 100% of that company, according to an analysis of documents his business submitted to federal and local officials while he was president. Between the election and the end of 2020, Trumps campaign committee handed over $113,000 to Trumps business.

In the New Year, Trump didnt really shut down his campaign committee. Instead, he renamed it, turning it into the Make America Great Again PAC. Beginning on January 4, 2021, that PAC started funneling money to the Trump Organization, handing $8,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection by the end of the month. The group also wrote rent checks to the same entities that the campaign had been previously paying$38,000 to Trump Tower Commercial LLC every month or so and often another $3,000 to Trump Restaurants LLC. Its unclear why the Make America Great Again PAC still needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent in 2021, given that the election took place in 2020. Representatives of the PAC and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. By the end of February 2022, the Make America Great Again PAC had paid $526,000 to Trumps companies, according to the review of Federal Election Commission filings.

Its unclear why the Make America Great Again PAC still needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent in 2021, given that the election took place in 2020.

While the campaign committee and its rebranded offshoot cut big rent checks, other Trump political groups splurged at the former presidents hotels. Nine days after the election, a joint-fundraising committee named Trump Victory, which gathered funds for the Trump campaign and several state-level Republican groups, paid $294,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection. Smaller sums followed. Trump Victory ended up spending more than $300,000 from the election to February 2021, when it last recorded paying a Trump property.

Other entities picked up the slack. In June 2021, a joint-fundraising committee that collects money for Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) paid Trumps hotels $22,000. Six months later, a different joint-fundraising committee handed Mar-a-Lago, Trumps Palm Beach club, $34,000.

Then there was Trumps leadership PAC, Save America. Leadership PACs often allow politicians to dole out money to other candidates they support. In Trumps case, the group also served as a vehicle for directing donor money into his business. From February 2021 to May 2022, Trumps leadership PAC spent $213,000 at Trump properties.

The Save America payments generated some press recently, as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol took note of the groups operations. The former president told supporters that they could donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund, even though that fund apparently didnt exist, according to the committee. Most of the money instead went to Save America, which in turn paid a small portion to Trumps business. Not only was there the Big Lie, concluded Repr. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California. There was the big rip off.

Read more from the original source:
Trump Moved More Than $1 Million From His Political Groups To His Private Business After Losing The Election - Forbes

Playgirl appeared to have run a competition where the winner could sleep with former President Donald Trump.

On Monday (27 June), @oldTrumpTweetz - the Twitter account dedicated to resharing interesting and bizarre moments from the former commander-in-chief - posted a few images from the 1990 Playgirl issue.

The first photo is of the magazine cover, and the others are of the Trump ads.

Hes rich, almost single and yours for the asking. Heres how [you can] get the Donald out of your dreams and into your bed, another photo read.

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According to a Snopes fact check in January 2020, Playgirl did run the Sleep with Donald Trump contest in 1990.

In the 1990s, Trump was in a messy and public divorce from his first wife, Ivana, which was displayed across New York tabloids.

With Ivanas claims of cruel and inhuman treatment at the hands of Trump, alongside other things, the former couple reached a divorce settlement that reportedly left her with anywhere from $14m to $25m.

Following the wildly talked about divorce, the August 1990 issue of Playgirl magazine teased readers with a cover blurb that said, Sleep with Donald Trump.

The publication intended to recreate the success of Playboy with a female audience.

Snopes further notes that the contest which was most likely a PR effort coordinated and paid for by Trump himself and/or a book publisher was actually little more than deceptive wordplay, which was complimentary of Trump.

Readers of the particular Playgirl issue also discovered that the prize to be won in the contest was a pillowcase with Trumps face silk-screened onto it. With the pillow, they could lie there whispering sweet nothings in his ear all night.

Elsewhere, Snopes added that there arent any records of the reactions of the winner if there happened to be any.

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Playgirl once ran a competition where the winner could sleep with Trump - indy100

Mr. Giulianis ex-wife Judith, who was with him at the time, told me that what gnawed at the former mayor most was a creeping fear of irrelevancy. (The couple divorced in 2019.) The flameout forced him to lower his sights from how to amass power to how to hold on to what he had left. When he offered a reporter a rare post-mortem on the race in 2009, he betrayed his concern. I think I shouldve fought Iowa harder, he told New York magazine. That was the beginning of becoming irrelevant.

After endorsing John McCain at the end of January, Mr. Giuliani disappeared from public view. Eager to escape the dreary cold of February in New York, he and his wife packed their bags and went to Florida to stay at her parents two-bedroom condo in Palm Beach, which Mr. Giuliani bought for them. They lived in Palm Beach Towers, an upscale high-rise apartment complex, with views of the crystalline blue Intracoastal Waterway, a swimming pool, landscaped gardens and nearby golf courses a natural place to relax after a brutal campaign. But he rarely left the apartment, spending his time sitting listlessly on his in-laws living room couch, sleeping late in the bedroom or smoking cigars in his bathrobe on the terrace facing a parking lot.

Ms. Giuliani said he refused to socialize or sit for meals, even as her mother, Joan, tried to entice him with his favorite dish, pasticcio. It started to really worry me because he was waking up only if I would wake him, she said. He became melancholy and self-pitying (You should leave me), she said. Her response You still have kids that love you, you have me, you have your health failed to assuage his sense of failure. He just could not get over it, she said.

She said he started to drink more heavily. While Mr. Giuliani was always fond of downing a scotch with his cigars, his friends never considered him a problem drinker. Ms. Giuliani felt he was drinking to dull the pain. The situation was concerning enough to send the couple searching for a more discreet locale for his recuperation, as the press caught on to their stay at Palm Beach Towers and photographers started popping up.

In search of a friend to turn to, they found one in Donald Trump. We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret, Ms. Giuliani said.

Mr. Trump provided them with a hideaway that was secluded from the press and passers-by, a safe space for an ailing friend who was a magnet for photographers. He had a perfect spot for them a bungalow across the street from Mar-a-Lago. A small tunnel ran underneath South Ocean Boulevard, a narrow two-lane highway, allowing the Giulianis to walk to dinner beyond the glare of the press. He thought he was finished, she told me. His drinking accelerated, she said, the beginning of a series of episodes in which he fell and hurt himself. He was always falling shitfaced somewhere, she said.

Continue reading here:
Opinion | The Bromance of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani - The New York Times

TRUMP AND THE ROE DECISION.There's a debate among some on the right about former President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Does Trump deserve any credit for what happened?

Some anti-Trump voices say the answer is no. "Am I glad to see Roe gone?" asked National Review's Kevin D. Williamson in a recent article. "Absolutely. Do I think that Trump's role in this could have been performed by a reasonably well-trained monkey? Absolutely." Williamson went on to write that "no conservative who knows how to read supported Trump in 2016 because he was solid on judicial originalism," arguing instead that "it was movement conservatism ... that kept the Trump presidency from being a disaster for the right."

Williamson is an extreme case he likes to call Trump a monkey. But other, less strident anti-Trump voices have also tried to minimize Trump's contributions. So what is the reality? Does Trump, in fact, deserve some credit for the overturn of Roe? The answer is absolutely yes.

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The critics point out that Trump was pro-choice for most of his life. Indeed he was. When conservative pro-lifers were laboring to defeat Roe in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s, Trump was nowhere to be found. But when he ran for president in 2016, Trump proclaimed himself pro-life. Did he really mean it? Had he undergone some profound conversion? Or did he simply realize that he needed pro-life support to win the Republican nomination and then GOP votes in the general election?

Answer that with a question: Does it really matter? Whatever he truly believed, if anything, Trump pledged to appoint pro-life judges, which for decades was the most important promise a Republican presidential candidate could make to the pro-life world. He was quite explicit about it. In his final debate with Hillary Clinton, on Oct. 19, 2016, Trump, ever the salesman, outlined a scenario that sounds quite familiar today.

The discussion began when moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump, "Do you want the court, including the justices that you will name, to overturn Roe v. Wade, which includes, in fact, states, a woman's right to an abortion?"

"Well, if that would happen, because I am pro-life and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states," Trump answered. "If they overturned it, it will go back to the states."

"But what I'm asking you, sir," Wallace responded, "is do you want to see the court overturn you just said you want to see the court protect the Second Amendment. Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade?

Trump's answer: "Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that's really what's going to be that will happen. And that will happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court. I will say this: It will go back to the states, and the states will then make a determination."

It was music to pro-life ears. Did Trump feel it in his heart? No one cared. Pro-lifers had experienced so much disappointment in the past that their only real question was: Will he really do it?

To establish his credibility, especially since he had never run for office before, Trump went to the nation's premier conservative legal organization, the Federalist Society, for advice. Actually, more than that. Trump in effect farmed out the choice of judicial nominees to the group, which was happy to have more influence with a presidential candidate than it ever had.

Remember that in the 2016 campaign there was an empty Supreme Court seat, courtesy of Mitch McConnell (R-KY), then the Senate majority leader. Justice Antonin Scalia had died suddenly in February 2016, and McConnell outraged Democrats by holding the court seat open throughout 2016, on the grounds that since one party held the White House and the other party held the Senate, it should be left to the voters to choose the president to make the next nomination. So the campaign was held in the context of an open court seat.

Trump's campaign gambit, introduced in May 2016, was to produce a Federalist Society-vetted list of judges and lawyers and promise that he would pick a court nominee from that list. The first list had 11 names, and then in September 2016, Trump expanded it to 21 names. Trump's promise was explicit: I will pick my Supreme Court nominees from this list. All were solid conservatives.

So that was the campaign. Here's the remarkable part, from the pro-lifers' perspective: When Trump was elected, he kept his promise. He started with Neil Gorsuch, who became Justice Neil Gorsuch. Then he added a few names to the list, including Brett Kavanaugh.

Pro-lifers were cautiously delighted when Trump nominated Kavanaugh to fill the seat of the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Democrats were enraged. And then, when Democrats and allies on the Left launched an all-out attack on Kavanaugh, Trump stuck by his nominee. The attack came in the form of uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault 35 years earlier, when Kavanaugh was in high school. There was never a bit of proof that it ever happened. And then came progressively wilder allegations as Democrats launched a desperate attempt to smear Kavanaugh.

Trump stood behind Kavanaugh. This is fromJustice on Trial, the definitive account of the nomination battle by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino:

Everyone, including the president, wanted to fight back on every front, including the media, in the committee, and with a hearing. Nobody considered withdrawing the nomination. They knew they might not win in the midst of a #MeToo media frenzy, but they would go down fighting. President Trump's eagerness to fight had previously irritated Republican leaders, but now even they were thankful for it. Other Republican presidents might not have shown the same fortitude.

Another GOP president might have sent Kavanaugh a lovely handwritten note thanking him for his willingness to serve but informing him that the administration would have to go in a new direction. Instead, Trump fought. And in the Kavanaugh confirmation, Trump earned the loyalty of many, many pro-lifers. He then strengthened the bond with the Amy Coney Barrett nomination, pushed through, by McConnell, again, in the final days of the 2020 campaign. (McConnell argued that it was OK to make such a late-term confirmation because both the White House and Senate were controlled by the same party.)

A simple recounting of what Trump did with his Supreme Court nominees is enough to undercut the ad hominem anti-Trump arguments. It in no way suggests Trump deserves exclusive credit for overturning Roe. Pro-life conservatives had labored for decades to make that happen. It was a big movement that suffered setbacks and kept going. Many people, including politicians, lawyers, activists, religious leaders, and others, contributed.

But the fact is, Trump contributed, too. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that he was essential to getting the anti-Roe campaign over the finish line.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.

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Trump and the Roe decision - Washington Examiner