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Trump replaces yet another lawyer after she is sanctioned for 'frivolous' election lawsuits: report
February 01, 2023
Former President Donald Trump has replaced yet another attorney as his legal challenges grow in the battery and defamation lawsuit brought by former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, reported Newsweek on Wednesday.
Alina Habba, an attorney who has represented Trump in this case and made frequent appearances on right-wing television defending the former president, joins a long list of attorneys Trump has replaced.
"According to court documents filed on Tuesday, veteran New York lawyer Joe Tacopina has been brought in to work with the former president to fight the suit filed against him by the former Elle columnist," reported Ewan Palmer. "Carroll is suing Trump for sexual battery over allegations he raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in New York in the 1990s. She is also suing the former president for defamation for comments he made while denying the assault, including stating 'she's not my type.'"
Notably, Trump appeared to contradict this defense in a recent deposition, when he mistook an image of a young Carroll for his second wife, Marla Maples — forcing Habba to step in and correct him.
IN OTHER NEWS: Lauren Boebert gets walloped at hearing for her ‘efforts to blame the victim’
Habba, who previously rose to right-wing legal stardom by representing a college student trying to overturn COVID-19 emergency measures, and then got involved in cases seeking to overturn the 2020 election, developed a reputation for her confrontational approach, that led even many officials in Trump's circle to grow tired of her. A Florida judge recently slapped her with sanctions for advancing a "frivolous" lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and several Justice Department and FBI officials in the 2016 election.
That lawsuit had sought $250 million in damages for what Trump described as a scheme to invent fake Russia allegations against him and damage his reputation. The Mueller report in fact documented that Russian interference on behalf of Trump did happen, repeatedly.
Habba is one of a long line of lawyers who once defended Trump to be replaced. Some, like Michael Cohen, even went to prison over their activities on Trump's behalf. Cohen has since begun cooperating with Manhattan prosecutors in a hush payment case against his former boss.
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'Set yourself up for problems': Republican leaders worry Trump is handing Dems an electoral advantage
February 01, 2023
Republican officials are worried that former President Donald Trump's recent 2024 presidential campaign appearance in New Hampshire will deter GOP voters from participating in early in-person voting, Bloomberg reports.
During his campaign speech, Trump mentioned that he hopes "someday" the U.S. will be more like New Hampshire and go "back to “be back to doing it the way it’s supposed to be: one-day voting.” According to Bloomberg, New Hampshire is only one of four states that does not offer early voting.
While states such as Ohio, Texas and Virginia move towards cutting the length of early voting periods or ending the tactic all together, other GOP leaders across the country see the importance of adapting the strategy.
“When you stick all of your eggs in the basket of in-person voting on a single day, you set yourself up for problems,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell.
Likewise, during the recent RNC chair election, Chair-elect Ronna McDaniel and former RNC Vice Chairwoman Harmeet Dillon both asserted that their party should "embrace" the idea "despite Trump's opposition" in order to defeat Democratic opponents.
Dhillon, who ran for chair against McDaniel said, “We have differences of opinion in the party. I’ve come around to the position that we need to be voting as early as possible, everywhere legal in the country.”
Reinforcing the party's desire to beat Democrats after suffering midterm election losses, Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming agrees with Dhillon and says he's "trying to sell the advantages of Republicans voting early to skeptical activists."
Schimming believes his GOP allies see the benefit of early voting, and added that he, himself, will be voting early by mail in his state's upcoming Supreme Court justice election. “I think there’s a sea change on early voting,” he said.
Robert Cahaly, a GOP consultant would like his respective party "to be pragmatic in its approach," and consider "all of the methods" of voting.
Referencing professional baseball, Cahaly said, “It’s just accepting the rules of the game, even if you don’t like them. If you play in the National League, you might not like the designated hitter rule, but it’s there, and you’d better learn to win with it.”
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'There's no hypocrisy': Marjorie Taylor Greene says she was removed from all committees so Omar can deal with it
February 01, 2023
WASHINGTON — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) spoke with reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday about the vote to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Omar is the only African-born person on the subcommittee for African relations. Republicans are attacking her for comments she made in early 2019 when she first came to Congress. Omar has since apologized and met with Jewish leaders to better understand why her comments were offensive. The House voted on a condemnation of Omar's comments.
One of them was in 2012 when she condemned Israel for the attacks on the West Bank. Another came in 2018 when she said that drawing attention to the actions by the government isn't about hating the people who live there. But it was the 2019 statements in which she said that Jewish power was all about the money that drew criticism from her own party.
"No, no, no, there's no hypocrisy," Greene told Raw Story. "They removed me from all committees. We just voted to remove her from one committee and she can serve on any of the other ones. That's not hypocritical. That's a big difference."
IN OTHER NEWS: Lauren Boebert gets walloped at hearing for her ‘efforts to blame the victim’
Unlike Greene, Omar hasn't spoken at a conference that welcomes neo-Nazis and white supremacists. She said that she didn't know about the political leanings of the group she spoke to. In 2018, Greene “speculated” that the wildfires that were tearing through California had been started by space-based lasers that were launched by the Rothschilds banking family, who are Jewish. She claimed it was a scheme to try and destroy California land and homes so that the family could buy it cheaper. Comments about the Rothschild family are often coded commentary about Jewish people and money.
In 2022, Greene hired infamous activist Milo Yiannopoulos, who has a history of anti-Semitism, to serve as an unpaid intern in the government office.
“We’re done putting Jewish interests first,” Yiannopoulos said while serving as spokesperson for Kanye West. The group had just come from a meeting with Donald Trump. “It’s time we put Jesus Christ first again in this country. Nothing and no one is going to get in our way to make that happen.”
Greene has also compared President Joe Biden to Hitler and in 2021 she characterized wearing masks during the COVID-19 crisis to the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews.
READ MORE: Lead investigator blows the whistle on key finding Jan. 6 committee ignored in final report
It's unclear how long the statute of limitations lasts on comments that Republicans find objectionable enough to have someone removed from their committee assignments.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), for example, (R-AZ), for example, has been a strong defender of Fuentes and also spoke at his America First events, which the Anti-Defamation League called a white supremacist gathering. He currently serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
At the same time, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has made consistently anti-Muslim remarks with no consequences.
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) cited a slate of Jewish leaders like George Soros, Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, saying that they "bought" the Democratic Party. It was something Roll Call reported as an "anti-Semitic dog whistle."
“One of the most popular unfortunately antisemitic tropes is the idea that Jews are pulling the strings,” Roll Call cited Rabbi Jill Jacobs, who serves as the executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.
“People aren’t expected to know everything about antisemitism, but when something gets called out the right response is, ‘Thank you for letting me know. I didn’t know that. I won’t do that again.’ We have not seen that from McCarthy and others. We have just seen deflecting and rejecting," she also said.
One of the top GOP leaders, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) ran Facebook ads promoting the so-called "great replacement theory." It's a far-right idea claiming Democrats want to "replace" white people with immigrants or people of color to create a "liberal majority."
“When you look at white nationalist online chatter, it’s very much all about this supposed Jewish plot. We saw it in the person who murdered Jews in a synagogue in Pittsburgh,” Jacobs also told Roll Call, citing the 2018 antisemitic terrorist attack at the Tree of Life synagogue. “His rationale was that Jews were bringing in refugees to destroy America.”
Republicans haven't indicated where the line exists for these comments and whether it will be applied beyond the Democrats they seek to remove. It's also unclear how long Omar will remain in the legislative "penalty box."
Greene currently serves on the House Homeland Security Committee after not being on committees for two years.
With additional reporting by Matt Laslo
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