'Could get very ugly': Legal experts focus on final day of Fani Willis hearing

ALSO READ: 'I'm shocked': Chris Christie's telling Trump moment among revelations in new Russia files

The final day of hearings in the complaint against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and a prosecutor on her team, Nathan Wade, began with legal analysts predicting that the arguments against her have failed to prove she should be disqualified.

The issue was whether Willis hired Wade because of their relationship and then benefited from his gifts to her. Law professor Joyce Vance said lawyers for Donald Trump and his co-defendants in the Fulton County RICO case have failed to prove that.

"Legal proceedings often turn on the burden of proof," she wrote on social media. "Here, it’s the defendants who bear that burden. And as salacious as the proceedings have been, they seem to have fallen short. You can’t prove something through a witness who won’t testify to it, and Bradley wouldn’t," she said referring to Terrence Bradley, Wade's former divorce attorney and law partner who was called to give evidence.

Meanwhile, she explained, Bradley had a motive to lie about it and badmouth Wade: she said he left the law practice after an allegation of sexual assault was made against him.

"Texts show he lured the defense lawyer in, but abandoned his claims about the relationship when it came to his testimony on the stand," wrote Vance.

ALSO READ: ‘Leave the drama to them:’ Mother of Lauren Boebert’s grandson speaks out

Fellow law professor Anthony Michael Kreis outlined what he was looking for on the final day of the hearing.

"(1) Arguments over the conflict standard," he wrote on social media. "(2) Is the locus of the argument around when the relationship ended? (3) What does Judge McAfee do with the recent affidavits? (4) Does everyone agree that Terrance Bradley is a liar? And, if so, (it basically has to be) how does that factor into arguments?"

"Finally, is the defense going to lean into an argument Willis and Wade did not testify with candor to the court? That could get very ugly. I’ll be looking for any signal from Judge McAfee if that takes center stage."

You can watch the hearing in the video below or at the link here.

Fani Willis hearing live stream | Arguments on motions to disqualify www.youtube.com

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MAGA border enforcer was secretly under investigation when he abruptly left: report

Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who led controversial immigration crackdowns in Chicago and Minneapolis, was secretly under internal investigation when he suddenly announced his retirement in March, per newly released records.

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show a federal watchdog official contacted Bovino on March 2 to open an "official Inquiry into allegations of misconduct," the Chicago Tribune reported on Monday.

Just over two weeks later, on March 18, Bovino informed officials he planned to retire. The investigation centered partly on a federal judge's finding that Bovino had lied under oath, and partly on allegations he made antisemitic remarks toward a Minneapolis prosecutor.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis had ruled last fall that Bovino's testimony in a Chicago civil rights case was "not credible," writing that he'd appeared evasive and untruthful during depositions. Investigators directly asked Bovino whether that finding made him "Giglio impaired" — legal jargon for an officer whose credibility problems must be disclosed to defense attorneys in future criminal cases. Separately, investigators asked whether Bovino had commented that a Jewish federal prosecutor's Sabbath observance meant "orthodox criminals" also take Saturdays off, and whether he'd made a reference to Jewish people as the "chosen people."

Bovino denies any wrongdoing, telling the Tribune both probes were "drummed up" after he left Minnesota and calling the whole episode a "political hit job." He claims Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott forced a second review after an initial board cleared him, framing his ouster as retaliation.

"Open a file. Strip the security detail. Investigate the security," Bovino wrote in a recent social media post, describing what he called a deliberate effort to push him out quietly.

Since retiring, Bovino has turned increasingly critical of the Trump administration's immigration approach, pushing conspiracy theories that one-third of the entire U.S. population should be deported, and even suggesting in a Tucker Carlson interview that officials stripped his security detail because they wanted him dead. Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the newly surfaced records.

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‘Not wise’: Republican breaks ranks to fight Pentagon press crackdown

A Republican lawmaker is joining forces with a Democrat to reverse the controversial Trump-era restrictions on journalists at the Pentagon.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) and Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) introduced bipartisan legislation Monday that would restore press access to areas of the Pentagon that were open to reporters before restrictions imposed under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“A free press makes our country better, and the new Pentagon media restrictions are not wise,” Bacon said. “I was stationed at the Pentagon twice and saw firsthand that credentialed reporters had access to hallways, cafeterias and designated press areas, not offices or classified areas with sensitive national security information.”

According to Bacon and Jacobs, the legislation would restore reporters’ access to areas including the “Correspondents’ Corridor” and renew unescorted access to previously accessible parts of the building, among other reforms.

“Muzzling the Pentagon’s independent press corps blinds Congress and the American people to what’s happening in our name and with our money,” Jacobs said in a statement.

“Without transparency, the American people can’t trust they’re getting the truth, not propaganda, or that the military is following the rule of law,” she added.

The bipartisan push comes amid fresh scrutiny of the Trump administration’s treatment of the press.

The Treasury Department on Monday denied credentials to individual reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News for this week’s G20 finance meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, according to media reports. The news came as Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was invited to attend, political activist and writer Amy Siskind noted.

Supreme Court handed Trump a wrecking ball — and the Oval Office may be next

Construction on Donald Trump's aloof, monarchical, for-rich-whites-only 90,000-square-foot ballroom can proceed, thanks to an aloof, monarchical, and for-rich-whites-only Supreme Court.

What the Supreme Court handed down today isn't a ruling about a simple, easy-to-explain throwback to the Gilded Age. It's a ruling about whether anything and anyone can stop Donald Trump from doing whatever he wants to the country's most symbolic public property. And by extension, to the country itself.

I predicted this. Not because I’m some legal genius, but because these robed robbers and rulers on the High Court are now just too predictable. When given a chance to check or stop Trump, they will, 99% of the time – my own educated guess – find a reason not to.

Further, give Congress a chance to defend our Constitution, and it too will find a reason to look away. Now put these accomplices and capitulars together, and you get exactly what happened today, a 5-4 ruling clearing the way for construction to continue (It never really stopped.) on the White House ballroom, because the justices decided Trump has the authority to bulldoze part of the people's house, or frankly all of it, because Congress, which has authority over the property, doesn’t give a damn.

That's the pathetic and easy-way-out center of this ruling. The majority didn't say the ballroom is legal. It said the National Trust for Historic Preservation lacks standing to challenge it, because the "power of the purse" and authority over federal property belong to Congress, and Congress hasn't sued.

The only people with the power to stop this are Speaker Mike Johnson and his gutless House majority. Since they won't sue, Trump can do whatever the hell he wants. So fitting for this alarming era of congressional cowardice.

The Court knows damn well that Congress won't act, and it is choosing to hide behind that inaction rather than exercise the desperately needed judicial check the Constitution actually gives it.

Chief Justice Roberts had the foresight to see what this really was. Joining the Court's three liberals in dissent, he called the construction "likely unlawful" and warned that the majority was letting the executive branch "arrogate Congress's exclusive powers" simply because lawmakers haven't bothered to defend them.

He picked apart the White House's claim that $400 million in private donations gives them the right to bypass Congress, pointing out that federal law requires the "express authority of Congress" for major construction on federal land in Washington, regardless of who is paying.

And he said by letting Trump "outrun the courts," finishing the building long before any court reaches a final verdict on its legality, the majority has made the legal question academic.

In other words, you can't unbuild a ballroom.

So, will anything actually restrain Trump? If he can demolish part of the White House because Congress didn't formally object, what's left standing that Congress also hasn't formally objected to?

He's already ripped out the Rose Garden. He's already put in a helipad, ripping up the beautifully manicured South Lawn. Under SCOTUS logic, there's no legal reason he couldn't decide the Oval Office is too small (I've stood in it, and it is small) and knock out a wall, or demolish the whole West Wing like he did the East Wing.

Why wouldn’t he? Trump yearns for massive official offices like those of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. And Trump, who thinks he’s some supreme builder, realizes that the monster Ballroom on the East side dwarfs the puny disc on the West side. Well, he’ll want to even that out.

The Oval Office is not simply another room in a government building. The first Oval Office was built in 1909, when President William Howard Taft, with congressional approval, expanded the West Wing, and the office was moved to its current location in 1934 during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s expansion of the West Wing, again, with congressional approval.

Every president since then has used that room. It has been the setting for decisions and announcements that defined generations: war and peace, crises and triumphs, statehood and national tragedy. In 1945, Harry Truman announced Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II from the Oval Office. It has become so synonymous with the presidency that the room itself has come to symbolize the peaceful transfer and exercise of presidential power.

But Trump has already destroyed the Oval, plastering gold appliques everywhere there was once white space.

Further, there's no reason he couldn't take a dislike to the Lincoln Memorial and rip the statue of Abe out from his chair, and put a gold-plated Donald Trump in its place.

Two years ago, if someone told you Trump would take a wrecking ball to the East Wing, you would have laughed. So, don’t laugh when you consider that the increasingly unstable Trump would tear up more of the People’s House, or brazenly try to erase Lincoln.

This ruling now gives Trump almost dictator-like authority. The Court gave Trump broad immunity from prosecution. The Court is letting his administration meddle with the Postal Service and voter rolls ahead of an election without consequence.

Now add a Court that will let him gut and rebuild the people's house because the people's representatives couldn't be bothered to stand up for the people’s house. Individually, each ruling is a hammer. Together, they are a bulldozer, operating with impunity to knock over any democratic limits standing in the way.

The ballroom will get built. I mean, we all knew it was always going to get built. But what’s next? What will we watch be torn down?

The destruction of the White House and its grounds is a metaphor for our democracy. It’s been torn apart, it’s been ignored, it’s been run over. And now that it’s just a leveled construction pit, what will take its place?

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