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Anti-vaccine leader Christopher Key has long sought to confront one specific idiotformer President Donald Trump. He almost got his wish.

Key holds a deep grudge against Trump for, as he put it, releasing a bioweapon onto the world. That bioweapon is just the COVID-19 vaccine, which has saved, by some estimates, tens of millions of lives. But that hasnt stopped Key from taking extreme measures to advocate against the vaccine.

Key is so adamant that the vaccine does harm, in fact, that he drinks his own urine.

That strategy, known on the far right as looping, is supposed to cure COVID-19 symptoms. Key has long urged his supporters to follow his lead and collect their morning urine to drink throughout the day. (As noted in a Reuters fact-check, there is no evidence that sipping your own urine can magically cure you from a case of coronavirus.)

While Key has plenty of foesDonald Trump, Democratic state governors that he seeks to place under citizens arrest, even Whole Foods grocery stores everywhereits become something of his lifes mission to confront the former president.

So when tickets went on sale for $500 for an evening with Donald Trump Jr. and former congressional candidate Joe Kent in Palm Beach, Key leapt at the chance. It was Keys understanding that the former president might drop by the event, as hes been known to do, and Key would finally have a chance to confront Trump. And either way, hed get a chance to challenge Don Jr..

Open Bar and Hors doeuvre Provided, the invitation said.

Key didnt partake in the hors doeuvreshes on a liquid fastand he didnt end up getting a chance to confront Don Jr.

In the midst of indictment chaos back at Mar-a-Lago, the fundraiser only elicited a short appearance from Don Jr.

Supposedly, his father got indicted today...we were supposed to do a lot of one-on-one time, Key told The Daily Beast. Nobody really got to talk to him at all because he was in and out.

Key did walk away, he thought, with another chance to confront the former presidents son; he placed an $11,000 winning bid to have a private dinner with Don Jr.once again, with the hope that the former president might drop by.

We encourage you to request a date when President Donald Trump is staying at Mar-a-Lago as it is his habit to visit dinner guests, and you may then have the opportunity to greet him, a March 31 letter sent to Key said.

But apparently, after Trumpworld found out about Key and his history, they canceled the dinner, and Key was once again denied his opportunity.

In recent months, Key has taken his QAnon beliefs and claims that he is a sovereign citizen, to new heights. The latter claim, which essentially involves a far-right theory that one doesnt have to follow laws, has been bolstered by Keys claims that he doesnt drive his car, so much as he travelsa pointless distinction that Key believes means his car isnt subject to normal road rules because its a wagon, with wagon wheels.

The anti-vaccine leaderwho calls himself the Vaccine Police and wears a police-like badgealso parades around with a flamethrower, though he has no authority.

Kent ally Matt Braynard and a Don Jr. spokesperson didnt return The Daily Beasts request for comment.

The now-canceled dinner between Key and Don Jr. is a near-miss for the Trump campaign, which has long struggled to keep extremist Mar-a-Lago visitors at bay. Most notably, last year, Trump welcomed disgraced rapper Kanye West and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, which drew nearly universal condemnation from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike on Capitol Hill.

But Key was apparently too wild for Mar-a-Lago.

I believe that they went and did the research, and they found out who I was, and the last thing they wanted me to do was to sit down with Donald Trump Jr. and his father, Key told The Daily Beast while adding he was going to go after both of them about the bioweapon.

He knows my stance on adrenochrome, he concluded.

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Urine-Drinking Anti-Vaxxer Is Denied His Dinner With Donald Trump ... - The Daily Beast

The Manhattan Criminal Courthouse hallway was not the sort of stage that Donald J. Trump would have handpicked for himself.

As tabloid figure, reality-TV star and president, Mr. Trump always paid close attention to his set dressing. With an instinct for the camera, he preferred settings that conveyed grandeur and lent him an aura of power, be they the made-for-TV boardroom of The Apprentice, the Trump Tower escalator at his 2015 campaign announcement or the church on Lafayette Square where he held a photo-op after police tear-gassed protesters.

The hallway outside the courtroom where Mr. Trump became the first former president to be criminally indicted was no glitzy platform. The floors were scuffed and the walls drab. The camera focused on a pair of safety-glass double doors, reflecting red EXIT signs, through which a glum-looking Mr. Trump passed on his way to his arraignment. The scene was gray, humdrum, municipal, more Night Court than Supreme Court. You could practically smell the vending-machine coffee.

The result made visually real what had become a clich in the case: No one was above the law. Mr. Trump was right there in the laws nondescript belly (despite the special accommodations that went into his arraignment). In still courtroom images instantly plastered on screens, he sat in the dock like any other defendant, slumped, watched by court guards.

It was an unprecedented sight, a former president being arrested and charged. But as the camera framed him, he was just a guy from Queens waiting to hear from the judge.

Reports before the arraignment said that Mr. Trump planned to speak to the press before entering the courtroom. He did not. Though he had mulled the value of doing a perp walk, there was no such parade. There was no mug shot. There were no handcuffs.

But he was shackled nonetheless: He was for once not at liberty to choose his own scenery. The man who never met a TV camera he couldnt hog made a quick turn away from it. The man who for the four years of his term had people wondering what would come out of his mouth next kept his lips sealed. The man who practiced the art of media saturation was reduced to a handful of stills and a Grinch-y courtroom sketch.

If the indictment put Mr. Trump in an unfamiliar position, for cable news it was like a trip back in a time machine. Fox News hosts fervently defended Mr. Trump after spending months distancing themselves. Other cable outlets returned to their all-Trump-all-the-time default setting from years ago.

During the 2016 campaign, cable networks aired Mr. Trumps empty podium before his speeches. On Monday, there were live shots of his plane sitting on a Florida tarmac, taking off and landing in New York, then of his motorcade wending through crosstown traffic, as if rolling up Trump-era and O.J.-era TV excess in one package. On Tuesday, news choppers tracked his drive from Trump Tower to the court building, possibly the most-viewed downtown commute in history.

Ironically, the case that reduced Mr. Trump to a glowering character with no lines was a byproduct of the peak of his TV fame. Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose payoff is at the heart of the investigation, met Mr. Trump during a celebrity golf tournament in 2006, two years after the debut of The Apprentice on NBC.

Mr. Trump has denied having sex with Ms. Daniels. But a well-cultivated playboy rep was long part of the persona that he parlayed into reality-TV stardom, which in turn helped give him the visibility (and the carefully produced image as a business leader) to run for president.

According to reports, Mr. Trump and his advisers debated how much of a spectacle to make of his arraignment. (On CNN, Kaitlan Collins reported that he had expressed some interest in having his mug shot taken; it didnt happen, but his 2024 presidential campaign created its own for a fund-raising pitch anyway.) His lawyers ultimately argued against allowing TV cameras into the courtroom.

Mr. Trump, however, has seemingly lived most of his adult life under the premise that if something didnt happen in front of cameras, it didnt happen. In the past, his go-to response to any situation in which he might have seemed weak or defeated was to script himself a scene in which he was framed as powerful and a winner.

When he was hospitalized with Covid in October 2020, it was a rare instance in which Mr. Trump had no choice but to appear diminished in public. He set out to fix that, posing at a table with a stack of files in the hospital and choreographing his return to the White House, where he removed his face mask on a balcony. As my colleague Maggie Haberman reported, he considered a plan to unbutton his dress shirt and reveal a Superman logo underneath.

One can only imagine the prop ideas floated this time. (Breakaway handcuffs?) Instead, he returned to his comfort zone Mar-a-Lago, surrounded by gilded columns, American flags and the MyPillow guy to run down a Festivus list of grievances to a friendly MAGA crowd.

It was certainly a more pugilistic Mr. Trump than the one who sat in the dock on Tuesday afternoon. But where the arraignment got saturation coverage, only Fox among the major news networks carried the speech beginning to end. As a TV draw, Donald Trump holding court is no competition for Donald Trump sitting in one.

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For Once, Donald Trump Did Not Enjoy the Show - The New York Times

As a former president and the de facto leader of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump is one of the most powerful people in America.

But as a criminal defendant within the confines of the Manhattan courtroom where the case against him will play out for months to come, Mr. Trump is under the authority of someone else: the presiding judge, Juan M. Merchan.

The two men came face-to-face on Tuesday, after prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorneys office unveiled 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump. When the prosecutors raised some of the former presidents recent social media posts, including one warning that death and destruction could follow if he were charged, Justice Merchan asked that Mr. Trump refrain from making comments that were likely to incite violence or civil unrest.

But after the hearing, Mr. Trump returned to Florida and to his old habits, calling the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, a criminal, and Justice Merchan himself a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family.

Justice Merchans warning and Mr. Trumps reaction later that evening provided dueling examples of what will almost surely be a delicate dance. The former president, who is running to take back the White House, will have to appeal to a political base that feeds on his unrestrained rhetoric without crossing a line that might cause the judge to take action against him.

If Mr. Trump does cross that line, Justice Merchan will have to be careful in how he responds, to avoid any appearance of bias. He has the rare power to constrain the former presidents speech. The question will be whether and how to use it.

A judge in this situation would have to discipline themselves constantly and try to act and respond to the situation as they would to any defendant facing these charges, said Barry M. Kamins, a former administrative judge of New York Citys criminal courts. I know it sounds like a herculean task to do that, but I think a judge has to be able to do exactly what he would do in any other case.

Mr. Trump, who on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush-money payment made to a porn star on his behalf, has the same rights the U.S. Constitution guarantees to any defendant. He has freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial and is innocent until proven otherwise.

But judges have significant power over defendants who appear before them, and Justice Merchan would have several means of disciplining Mr. Trump, if he deems it necessary.

I am sure Justice Merchan wants to avoid a real confrontation, if that is humanly possible, but he will want to assert the authority of the court, said Michael J. Obus, a judge who served in State Supreme Court for more than two decades and who has known Justice Merchan for about 14 years.

Though judges often act on their own accord, they sometimes exercise their powers over a defendant after prosecutors ask them to do so. On Tuesday, one of the prosecutors, Catherine McCaw, said that her team was in talks with Mr. Trumps lawyers over a draft protective order that would limit how the former president uses evidence and other case material shared with his lawyers.

Prosecutors are seeking to bar him from reviewing the material without his lawyers present, and from sharing the material with third parties, including the press or his social-media following. If he were to violate such an order, he could be held in contempt of court, Ms. McCaw said.

But Mr. Trumps defense lawyers have since decided that theyre going to oppose the proposed order, and the matter likely will be subject to litigation, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Current and former judges said that Justice Merchan, who has been on the bench in New York State Supreme Court since 2009, would almost certainly take other steps before he even considered placing Mr. Trump in contempt of court.

He could admonish Mr. Trump or ask that the former president return to court in person earlier than Dec. 4, his next scheduled appearance date. Only if the former president continued to lash out might he think about harsher punishments.

One of those, raised in advance of Tuesdays hearing by some of Mr. Trumps associates, could be a gag order, a catchall term for an order limiting what a defendant or often a defendants lawyer can say to the public. Judges are usually hesitant to impose such orders and do so only to prohibit specific types of speech.

Certainly, the court would not impose a gag order at this time even if it were requested, Justice Merchan said during Mr. Trumps arraignment. Such restraints are the most serious and least tolerable on First Amendment rights. That does apply doubly to Mr. Trump, because he is a candidate for the presidency of the United States.

When prosecutors raised the subject of the social media posts from Mr. Trump, Justice Merchans response asking Mr. Trumps legal team to warn the former president against making such comments seemed to reflect the judges intention to exercise his authority in stages.

This is a request Im making, he said. Im not making it an order.

If Justice Merchan were to find Mr. Trump in contempt of court, he would have the power to fine the former president up to $1,000, or even to jail him for 30 days. But experts said the possibility of that happening is very slim.

The judge can put him in jail but that would absolutely be the last resort, because it would just make matters worse, Judge Kamins said.

Justice Merchan has been under the protection of armed court officers at least since the grand jury voted to indict Mr. Trump on March 30, according to a person familiar with the arrangements.

One person who knows the judge said his chambers have been flooded with calls of support from colleagues and others, as well as angry calls from supporters of the former president, and many of those calls have included threats.

For decades, Mr. Trump has taken a keen interest in the judges presiding over civil cases that have involved him. Longtime associates recall Mr. Trump invoking Roy M. Cohn, his former fixer and lawyer, when arguing about the importance of the judge in charge of any case.

The former president often suggests judges hearing cases are too biased to continue, as he has with Justice Merchan. People familiar with Mr. Trumps thinking say he believes he can get the judge to recuse himself. He may seize on public records which show that, during the 2020 presidential election, Justice Merchan donated $15 to the Democratic group Act Blue earmarked for Mr. Trumps opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as well as $10 each for two other Democratic groups, including one called Stop Republicans.

Before he was arraigned, Mr. Trump attacked Justice Merchan by his full name: Juan Manuel Merchan. Justice Merchan was born in Bogot, Colombia. He came to the United States with his family when he was 6 years old, grew up in Queens and began his legal career in 1994 as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan.

Last fall, he presided over the trial of Mr. Trumps family business, The Trump Organization, which in December was convicted of 17 felonies. He is currently overseeing a case the district attorneys office brought against Steve Bannon for defrauding contributors to an organization that sought to help construct a wall along the southern border.

Though Justice Merchan typically appears sober and even-keeled, lawyers for Mr. Trumps company and Mr. Bannon have at times tested him. During the trial of the Trump Organization, he appeared to grow frustrated with two of Mr. Trumps lawyers after they made vulgar references and gestures in closing arguments. Eventually he told another lawyer representing the company to tell them to refrain from the improper decorum thats going on.

He had even less patience for David Schoen, a lawyer for Mr. Bannon. A January hearing at which Mr. Schoen was seeking to be removed from the case included several fiery exchanges between Justice Merchan and Mr. Schoen.

At the end of the hearing, the judge told the lawyer that you never need come back.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

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Dilemma for Judge in Trump Case: Whether to Muzzle the Former ... - The New York Times

The same week that former President Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan court room for the first time, ProPublica reported that for years Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has accepted luxury trips from Republican businessman Harlan Crow without disclosing them. At first glance, those two stories may seem to overlap little, beyond two leading figures on the right being caught up again in scandal. But both Trump and Thomas are under fire as much for their record keeping as their actions a sad sign of how ill-equipped our political system is to punish corruption.

Remarkably, amid the stories of lavish resorts, private jets and all-male retreats, the two most telling details about Thomass story arent even in ProPublicas reporting. The first is Thomass statement. While Crow affirmed his generosity to Justice Thomas and Ginni to ProPublica, Thomas himself declined comment. Only after a day-long firestorm did Thomas issue his own statement Friday, claiming that colleagues and others in the judiciaryadvised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.

If the justice felt his actions were proper, then he would never have hid them or obscured why he hid them.

If Thomass claim that borrowing a private jet counts as hospitality stretches credulity, the second detail blows it up. This isnt the first expos of Crows generosity to the Thomases. Nearly 20 years ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that Thomas had accepted gifts and trips from Crow, including a bust of Frederick Douglass valued at $19,000. As that newspapers David G. Savage wrote Thursday, Thomas responded to that story, not by swearing off gifts, but by not disclosing those gifts. If the justice felt his actions were proper, then he would never have hid them or obscured why he hid them.

Which brings us to Donald Trump. The former president has turned shamelessness into brand I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, okay, and I wouldnt lose any voters, okay? But he allegedly hid a one-night stand with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and an alleged affair with Playboy playmate Karen McDougal.

The overly credulous argue that the alleged concealments were to preserve his marriage. But according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs statement of facts, McDougals non-disclosure agreement ended after the election, and Trump asked his then-lawyer Michael Cohen if they could delay the payment [to Daniels] until after the electionbecause at that point it would not matter if the story became public. Then as president, Trump allegedly disguised his reimbursement of Cohen to further bury the deception.

Why go to all this effort? Because most voters consider having affairs and purchasing peoples silence to win election as actions not befitting a president. The latter of those two actions is crucial: Braggs case doesnt exist because of hush money or because of any alleged affairs. It exists because he says Trump deceived voters to win an election.

Braggs statement of facts and Thomas failure to disclose Crows lavish spending on him suggest that Trump and Thomas knew their actions were unworthy of the offices one sought and the other held. But unfortunately, neither mans actions will lead to any accountability by themselves. Instead of charging Trump with cheating to win an election, and Thomas with receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in improper gifts, were left with allegations of falsifying business records and outrage over improper gift disclosures.

This problem of ethical violations being defined down into nonexistence runs wider than Thomas or Trump.

In Trumps case, the focus on his recordkeeping is partly the result of deliberate interference at the federal level. As legal writer Marcy Wheeler notes, after Cohen agreed to a guilty plea, the Trump Justice Department attempted to interfere in the Cohen investigation repeatedly. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr, for example, wanted the charges against Cohen dismissed even though hed already pleaded guilty. Over at the Federal Election Commission, Wheeler writes, the commissions general counsel recommended acting on complaints regarding Trumps payments to Cohen, but Republican Commissioners Sean Cooksey and Trey Trainorrefused to do so. By the time Trump left office, the federal government had its hands full with the Jan. 6 investigation and other matters.

As for Thomas, no interference was required because his actions though clearly unbecoming of a justice did not necessarily violate any actual rule. Even after years of trying to create an ethics code, the Supreme Court still has none. New guidelines from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will require Thomas to disclose some of those gifts going forward. But, still, no rule prevents him from accepting such gifts, nor does any mechanism exist to mandate his recusal from any case involving groups linked to Crow.

This problem of ethical violations being defined down into nonexistence runs wider than Thomas or Trump. The Supreme Court has been limiting the scope of anti-corruption laws for years. The most noteworthy ruling came in 2016, when the court reversed former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnells 2014 conviction on public corruption charges for accepting $175,000 in loans and gifts from a businessman who wanted McDonnell to promote a nutritional supplement. The court declared that none of McDonnells actions, including holding events at the governors mansion, met the standard of an official act.

Thomas joined in that decision, of course, but so did every single one of his colleagues including the liberal justices. That legal experts on both sides of the aisle agreed with the ruling, in defiance of common sense, only highlights the breadth of the problem. It seems obvious to the justices, wrote Slates Dahlia Lithwick during the cases oral arguments, that public corruption and ethics rules are adorable, antiquated, and unenforceable becauseeverybody does it. Indeed, subsequent Congresses, under both parties, have declined to replace the now-neutered official act standard with something more stringent. Other seemingly basic anti-corruption efforts, such as a ban on members of Congress trading stocks, have also languished.

Any accountability is better than no accountability. Demands for Thomass impeachment and resignation from Democrats such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif., are welcome. So are calls for investigations from senators such as Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin.

But even impeachment is only a start. It would be far better if, instead of relying on record-keeping violations, our political system developed stronger laws reflecting a common-sense standard of corruption. But too many people in power Republicans mostly, but many Democrats as well dont want it that way. They shelter in the shades of grey.

Oh, and the prosecutor who convicted McDonnell only to see that conviction thrown out? That would be Jack Smith, now in charge of the federal investigations of Trump. We can only hope that past isnt prologue.

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Donald Trump, Clarence Thomas and America's corruption creep - MSNBC

Trump lawyer James Trusty said Sunday that there are no more classified documents at former President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

In an interview on Meet the Press, Trusty was asked by NBC News' Chuck Todd whether he can be certain there are no classified documents or copies of documents at Mar-a-Lago following reports that Trump's legal team turned over additional materials, as well as a laptop, to investigators.

Yeah, sure," Trusty responded. "And I can tell you the leak about what happened with this additional document or several documents that were found in the thumb drive is absurd."

Sources had told CNN this year that a Trump aide made copies of classified documents his lawyers discovered in December in boxes at Mar-a-Lago before the documents were handed over to the Justice Department.

Its been the same mischaracterization that the media has run with to suggest that President Trump is just sitting on a mountain of documents. Its not true at all," Trusty said.

Trusty, a former Justice Department colleague of special counsel Jack Smith, whom Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed to investigate Trumps handling of classified documents, slammed the Justice Department for what he called a "campaign of leaks."

Last week, The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the Justice Department and the FBI have gathered new evidence that suggests possible obstruction by Trump in the documents case.

Theres been a campaign of leaks from DOJ unlike anything Ive ever seen, Trusty said. I was a prosecutor for 27 years. I spent 17 at this Department of Justice. I dont recognize it anymore."

The FBI recovered a trove of top secret and other highly classified documents when itsearched Mar-a-Lagoin Florida in August. After the incident, classified materials were also found in the possession of President Joe Biden, as well as former Vice President Mike Pence.

Garland has appointed separate special counsels to investigate theTrumpandBidendocuments. He has not appointed a special counsel to review the Pence documents.

Former Trump Attorney General William Barr said Sunday he thinks investigators "probably have some very good evidence in the probe into the former presidents handling of classified documents.

He had no claim to those documents, especially the classified documents, Barr said in an interview on ABC News This Week. They belonged to the government. And so I think he was jerking the government around, and they subpoenaed it. And they tried to jawbone him into delivering documents.

But the government is investigating the extent to which games were played and there was obstruction in keeping documents from them. And I think thats a serious potential case," Barr added.

A federal judge ruled last month that Smith's office had presented sufficient evidence to establish that Trump committed a crime through his attorneys in the classified documents probe, according to a source briefed on the proceedings.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of Washington was not ruling on whether Trump was guilty of a crime, only about whether his attorney could be compelled to testify.

As a result, Howell ruled in favor of applying the crime fraud exception, which would allow prosecutors to sidestep protections afforded to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran through attorney-client privilege. Howell also ordered Corcoran to testify before the federal grand jury.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in the case of the classified documents, having claimed last year that he can declassify materials by thinking about it.

Summer Concepcion is a politics reporter for NBC News.

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Trump lawyer says there are no more classified docs at Mar-a-Lago - NBC News