A conservative commentator splashed cold water on speculation that Donald Trump would back out of his first debate against president Joe Biden.
Democratic strategist James Carville wagers that Trump won't take the stage with Biden, but former Republican congressional staffer Amanda Carpenter told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the presumptive GOP nominee wouldn't pass up a chance to spew lies and inflict pain on his Democratic rival.
"I'm not a betting woman, but I would happily take the other side of James Carville's wager for the exact point that Donald Trump will not turn down an opportunity for confrontation," Carpenter said. "When it comes to messaging to his supporters, a presidential debate, even though it's the earliest one in history, is a huge opportunity to speak on the mass level. I'm almost certain, I will take the bet had he will use it as an opportunity to reinforce the lies about Joe Biden that he has been actively telling. If you look at every big media opportunity, the CNN town hall earlier this year, he use it is to do a few things. One, reinforce the 2020 big election lie, and No. 2, promote the lie that the Department of Justice is being unfairly weaponized against him by 'puppeteer' Joe Biden. The Biden campaign better be preparing for Trump to directly confront him about that because, as you noted, no one understands how to play to the cameras like Donald Trump."
The June 27 debate will be moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and there will be no studio audience, unlike past debates, and both of their microphones will be muted until it's their turn to speak – but Carpenter said the former president would likely find ways to disrupt the proceeding.
"Yes, his microphone maybe muted, but he is going to go hard at him and try to use the power of dynamics of the stage to knock Joe Biden off his game," Carpenter said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he also hits him in the gut with the Hunter Biden stuff. The GOP understands that that gets to the heart of Joe Biden. I just don't think there's any chance that Donald Trump says, 'You know what, I'm not going to use that opportunity that's laid before me' to directly reinforce those lies to his supporters."
"Stand back and stand by," added co-host Mika Brzezinski, recalling Trump's infamous statement at a 2020 debate to the right-wing extremist Proud Boys organization whose members later helped plan and carry out the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"Exactly," agreed host Joe Scarborough. "He's a disrupter, and he is going to figure out, cut off the microphones and do whatever you want to do, he's a disrupter. He doesn't really know the facts of the issues well at all, so he has to disrupt, he has to shock."
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough needled Donald Trump for waltzing out of a speech without taking any questions after promising to do so.
The presumptive Republican nominee told attendees at a convention center in Detroit that he would take their questions, which he said president Joe Biden was incapable of doing, and the "Morning Joe" host mocked Trump for walking out without taking a single query.
"I guess he didn't take the questions," said co-host Mika Brzezinski, laughing. "He just left."
Scarborough compared that casually broken promise to one of Trump's favorite rhetorical sleights, which is promising to deliver something in two weeks with no intention of following through, and he marveled at how so many fellow media members continued to fall for those tricks.
"It's interesting that some of these outlets will print something in the morning, they know it's a lie and they ran it anyway," Scarborough said. "Here Donald Trump says something, usually he lies and says, 'I'm putting out my health care plan in two weeks, going to be building the largest skyscraper in Moscow in two weeks, I'm going to be going to the moon fueled only by vitamin C and pixie dust in two weeks.' So two weeks come and people forget. He lies at the beginning of the speech: 'Unlike Joe Biden, I'll be answering your questions,' and then he just walks off. Again, for those of us who, like, have run campaigns and actually think that you have to do what, like, you say you're going to do with a speech or whatever or a call you have to answer that call. He just lies, walks off the stage."
The scene is straight from a discount bin spy novel.
A black SUV arrived at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to collect Sabrina Keliikoa, a QAnon adherent and supervisor at the facility’s FedEx air freight terminal.
Keliikoa was scared out of her wits.
She did not want to go.
But late on this Friday night in early December 2020, Keliikoa felt as if she had no choice: A retired Michigan State Police officer nicknamed “Yoda” had just warned that her life was in danger.
Keliikoa called in another employee to finish her shift. She entered the vehicle driven by a Marine Corps veteran who had provided security for American diplomats in Iraq. They arrived at a hotel where the driver checked her in. There, Keliikoa stayed for the next two days. A rotating set of “guards” occupied the adjacent room in shifts.
What was possibly happening here?
As Keliikoa would later testify in legal deposition, a video of whichRaw Story recently reviewed, a man entered her hotel room and asked her to write an affidavit about election ballots she’d seen — and considered suspicious — at the FedEx facility shortly after the 2020 election.
The man was part of a secretive team of Donald Trump supporters, operating without legal authority but under the leadership of former Trump national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, that aimed to obtain information they believed could be used in lawsuits to change the outcome of the election in Trump’s favor.
More generally, they hoped to undermine public confidence that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.
Keliikoa described the experience as being “detained” and complained she became a “pawn” of people determined to use her.
“So, I got a phone call that said somebody is coming in from another state with illegal ballots, and they were going to be looking for me, and they were going to try to kill me,” Keliikoa testified. “And I started crying because this turned into the biggest s---show when it shouldn’t have been.”
The escapade showcases the absurd lengths Flynn and his team went to concoct evidence that Trump had the 2020 presidential election “stolen” from him.
These and other baseless allegations of election fraud would instill fury in Trump’s supporters, who by the thousands attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while attempting to prevent Congress from certifying the election.
These new revelations about Keliikoa’s ordeal also come at a time when Trump, who is expected to again be the Republican nominee for president, relentlessly claims that the multiple criminal prosecutions against him constitute an effort “to rig the presidential election of 2024.”
Trump’s script is familiar and predictable: He similarly made repeated claims well in advance of the 2020 election that the vote would be rigged. It’s an all-but-foregone conclusion that if Trump loses the 2024 election, he will exclaim, as he did then, that he actually won, and that Democrats, communists, the “deep state” and other perceived bogeymen stole it from him.
And if history is a guide, high-profile Trump surrogates can again be expected to again chase phantom evidence and spin wild tales in service of Trump’s I-can’t-lose approach to campaigning.
‘A plane full of ballots’
Until now, Keliikoa — the woman who held the information so feverishly sought by Trump’s supporters following the 2020 election — was known only as “the Seattle whistleblower.”
Keliikoa’s deposition, taken in March, fills in details about the “stop the steal” escapade and are being reported for the first time by Raw Story.
The seeds of Keliikoa's ordeal began germinating in November 2020. An array of high-profile Trump supporters had initiated a frenzied effort to collect affidavits that they hoped would bolster claims of election fraud, which pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell detailed in a series of lawsuits.
The goal: overturn the presidential election results in tightly contested states such as Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, and more generally, to undermine confidence in the election.
With his charisma and the respect he commanded as a retired lieutenant general, Michael Flynn, who had briefly served as Trump's national security advisor, quickly emerged as a de facto leader among the group of “stop the steal” operatives surrounding Powell.
The 2020 election was “the greatest fraud that our country has ever experienced in our history,” Flynn told far-right broadcaster Brannon Howse during an interview aired on Nov. 28, 2020. “I’m right in the middle of it right now, and I will tell you that, first of all, the president has clear paths to victory.”
Flynn had reason to feel emboldened. Three days earlier, then-President Trump granted Flynn a full pardon, wiping away his guilty plea to charges of lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Flynn began to speak at rallies and make media appearances on Trump’s behalf.
Flynn’s interview with Howse was his first interview of any sort since receiving Trump’s pardon. The key to exposing the election fraud, Flynn told the podcaster, was channeling the perceived power of hundreds of Trump supporters who believed they witnessed voting fraud or election irregularities.
“I mean hundreds and hundreds of Americans around the country, not just the swing states, but many, many other states that are coming forward with their stories and putting them down in affidavits,” he said at the time.
Four days later, Powell addressed a “Stop the Steal” rally in the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta. There, she angrily told the crowd that there had been “flagrant election fraud,” and said her team had “evidence” of all manner of ballot fraud, including “a plane full of ballots that came in.”
Burk was a former school board member and law school student in Arizona who suffers from a medical condition known as pulmonary arterial hypertension.
A man in Burk’s lung condition support group told her about a woman in Seattle who allegedly had information about illegal ballots. That woman was Keliikoa, and Burk’s lung condition buddy arranged to put the two women in touch.
But Burk first attempted to report Keliikoa's information to the FBI and then relayed it to Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, a leading figure in the pro-Trump stop-the-steal effort. The supposed intel eventually filtered up to Sidney Powell’s legal team.
Burk and Keliikoa kept in touch by phone for the next month, but Keliikoa would later say she wouldn’t characterize their relationship as a friendship. Keliikoa didn’t want to give up her anonymity. Burk felt caught in a bind; she didn’t want to associate her own name with information she didn’t know firsthand, but she was feeling pressure from Townsend and others to persuade Keliikoa to come forward.
Sabrina Keliikoa as seen during a legal deposition on March 22, 2024. (Source: Deposition video via Staci Burk)
“I’ve been working on her coming forward for over a month,” Burk told Carissa Keshel, Powell’s assistant, in a Dec. 1, 2020, text message reviewed by Raw Story. “I almost facilitated a call with you, but she just got to work. She will likely let me do a conference call with anyone. But she’s still afraid to come forward.”
“What can we do to make her feel more comfortable?” Keshel asked Burk. “We can facilitate security.”
Attempting to find a way to obtain the information while preserving Keliikoa’s desired anonymity, Keshel suggested that Keliikoa forward her ballot intel to Burk, who, in turn, could include it in her own legal declaration. (Burk never fulfilled the request to provide such a statement.)
“Ok I just spoke with General Flynn,” Keshel told Burk. “He says if nothing else, if she can get us as much evidence as possible: pictures, facts. If she can send that to us (or you) and if she can even just write an email. Then you can do another declaration to cover for that. I hope that makes sense.”
What happened next demonstrates the effort by Flynn, Powell and a gaggle of pro-Trump activists to obtain affidavits supporting claims of election fraud was carefully orchestrated. It stands in stark contrast to the picture painted by Flynn — one of ordinary citizens organically and voluntarily coming forward to tell their stories out of a sense of patriotic duty.
Like Keliikoa, Burk found herself in the middle of conspiratorial talk surrounding supposed illegal ballots transported on planes and various security concerns.
Also — not insignificantly — if Powell's team was going to get access to Keliikoa, they would have to go through Burk, who was the only one who knew Keliikoa’s name or how to get in touch with her.
Flynn’s security team finds the ‘Seattle whistleblower’
On the morning of Dec. 4, 2020, Keshel texted Burk to tell her that she thought they had Burk’s “security issue all ironed out.”
Keshel then texted a photo of a man she identified as “Yoda” and a link to the website for 1st Amendment Praetorian, a volunteer security group linked to Flynn.
“Yoda” was Geoffrey Flohr, the retired Michigan State Police officer.
“Gen Flynn and his brother arranged the security for you, so I trust them,” Keshel told Burk in a text message.
“Yoda” arrived at Burk’s home in Florence, Ariz., later that day.
As previously reported by Raw Story, Burk has said that “Yoda” woke her up in the middle of the night. He told her that he had reliable information that the “Seattle whistleblower” was about to be kidnapped and taken to South Korea. “Yoda” even claimed that Burk’s friend in Seattle could potentially be killed if they didn’t send a security team to protect her, Burk recalled.
Burk called Keliikoa and put her on speaker phone so “Yoda” could speak to her.
Keliikoa would later testify that she was terrified by “Yoda” telling her about threats to her safety because bad actors were supposedly attempting to prevent her from exposing massive election fraud.
Indeed, she was so terrified that she called in another employee to cover for her and complete her work for the shift.
“And then what ended up happening is continuous phone calls back and forth,” Keliikoa testified. “‘Okay, well, somebody’s gonna send somebody to pick you up and take you to a safe place.’ But my name should have never been out there, and that makes me mad.”
At Burk’s insistence, late on that Friday night in early December 2020, “Yoda” provided Burk with a resume and photo of the driver who would pick up Keliikoa at the FedEx facility at the Seattle airport.
At 11:50 p.m., Burk texted the resume to Keliikoa.
Roland Hurrington — described on his resume as a Seattle-area Marine Corps veteran “responsible for the protection of classified material, equipment and U.S. mission personnel” — arrived at the FedEx facility in the black SUV to transport Keliikoa.
Keliikoa testified that Hurrington passed through a security checkpoint at the facility. How he was able to do that remains unclear, but Keliikoa speculated that the security personnel may have let him through based on the assumption that he was a chauffeur.
The pickup took place late at night — roughly 30 minutes after “Yoda” first spoke to her, according to Burk’s account.
“And then I get detained, taken,” Keliikoa recalled in her deposition. “And I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know where I was going. I can’t believe I actually agreed to go with this person, because they could have killed me and threw me on the side of the road, and nobody would have known.”
As it turned out, there never was a plot to kill Keliikoa.
In fact, while the pro-Trump stop-the-stealers involved didn’t know or admit it at the time, their entire ballot fraud enterprise was little more than a house of cards perched on pillars of sand.
And the ground beneath them was about to start quaking.
‘He fabricated everything’
Jim Penrose, a cyber-security expert who had previously worked at the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama, would later acknowledge to Burk that he was the man who showed up at Keliikoa’s hotel room and urged her to write an affidavit. After “Yoda” tracked Keliikoa down, Penrose went to her hotel room to meet her.
Penrose has been identified by the New York Times as being one of three men who joined Flynn and Powell at the South Carolina estate of defamation attorney Lin Wood to “gather and organize election information.” One of the others was Seth Keshel, a former Army military intelligence captain who was married to Carissa Keshel.
Jim Penrose as described on the website of the Institute for World Politics in Washington, D.C. (Institute for World Politics.)
“We had a security team dispatched in Seattle,” Penrose told Burk in a phone call that she recorded on Christmas Day of 2020.
“My worst fear was that the people were moving, you know, like a team of people that might want to, you know, even kidnap your friend in Seattle,” he said. “I didn’t want to let that happen, right, because I thought it was a situation that was dangerous. And we didn’t have enough info at the time to make a better decision.”
The reason why it was necessary for Flohr to wake up Burk involved grave concerns about an Arizona-based security company called Mayhem Solutions Group.
Why would Flohr care so much about this security firm?
Penrose had told Flohr a wild story about two Mayhem Solutions Group employees he believed were planning to fly an airplane to Phoenix to Seattle and potentially “kidnap” Keliikoa and take her to South Korea because of information she might have about election fraud.
The idea that Mayhem Solutions Group would be involved in a plot to harm Sabrina Keliikoa for the purpose of preventing her from exposing anti-Trump election fraud was not only bizarre. It was based on an utter fabrication.
Owner Shawn Wilson and his employee, Kenneth Scott Koch — both far-right operatives — were prone to conspiracy theories. Koch was a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers and an anti-COVID lockdown crusader. Koch had presented himself to Burk as a shadowy agent for a rogue government operation involved in illegal ballot trafficking.
More than two weeks before the Flynn security team was dispatched to Seattle, Koch had come to Burk’s house in Arizona to advise her on home security. During a discussion about a similar theory concerning illegal ballots being unloaded from a plane at Phoenix Sky Harbor, Koch told Burk that a group of men shown in a photo standing next to the plane were “my guys.”
Koch, who had organized an anti-lockdown group in Arizona in response to COVID-19 measures, went on to suggest to Burk that pro-Trump amateur sleuths attempting to uncover election fraud might learn about more than they bargained.
“A lot of these people want to be the center,” he said. “They wanna have the information. The problem is the information they don’t want.” For reasons that remain unclear, Penrose would hire an investigative team that included two former FBI agents to interview Koch about his claims, but not until after the madcap mission in Seattle to obtain the affidavit from Keliikoa.
“We interviewed Koch at length, and he said he fabricated everything,” Penrose told Burk during the Christmas Day phone call.
A one-time ‘hostile actor’ in Flynn’s camp
Patently ridiculous is the notion that a lie told by an anti-COVID lockdown advocate in Arizona, about illegal ballots on a plane, would trigger a weeks-long wild-goose that reached the highest levels of then-President Donald Trump’s inner sanctum, up to and including his former national security adviser.
In the end, the lead that sent Flynn’s associates to the Seattle airport under the pretext of a manufactured election crisis in December 2020 turned out to be little more than a photo of ballots and unexplained beeping from a package scanner that raised the suspicions of Keliikoa, a woman whose imagination was set alight by QAnon conspiracy theories.
One would not be faulted for thinking that nothing about this fake ballot-hunting story seems real.
Except for the fact that it is real.
It’s unclear whether Koch and his boss, Shawn Wilson, knew Flynn prior to the 2020 election. Regardless, Koch’s admitted deception hasn’t prevented Wilson from associating with the Flynn camp since that time.
The America Project, a nonprofit co-founded by Flynn, published a video in late 2023 that presented Wilson as someone who “knows more about what is going on at the border than probably anybody in America.” (Not mentioned in the interview was the fact that Wilson’s company had subcontracted with the state of Texas to operate buses transporting migrants to Democratic-run cities.)
As Election Day 2024 draws nearer, Wilson has only become more public and overt about his support for Trump.
The messaging in Wilson’s interview for Flynn’s nonprofit was a classic appeal to authoritarianism by invoking fear — part of Trump’s playbook since he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015. Wilson claimed that a military assault similar to the one launched against Israel by Hamas is imminent at the U.S southern border.
The remedy, Wilson suggested, is to ensure that Trump wins the 2024 election, adding, “I’ll be leading the charge with him right behind him.”
‘There was no goldmine’
Keliikoa confirmed her QAnon association, which inspired her ballot skepticism, during her deposition earlier this year.
She allowed that she sent Burk a link to a three-hour documentary video series Fall of the Cabal, which is described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a popular recruitment tool for QAnon followers.”
Keliikoa testified that following the November 2020 presidential election, she became suspicious because “we were moving ballots after places were called.” (That wouldn’t have been unusual, considering that the U.S. Postal Service was under a federal court order to locate and deliver mail-in ballots that hadn’t been received by Election Day.) One package that caused a scanner to triple beep — meaning “that it’s not recognized” — also concerned her.
“I believe that something looked wrong,” Keliikoa testified when asked under oath by Burk whether still believes that she witnessed election fraud at the FedEx facility in November 2020.
But Keliikoa admitted that she had nothing of value to share with the ad-hoc security team that sequestered her in a hotel in December 2020.
“They wanted to know if I knew about a plane coming in with these illegal ballots,” Keliikoa recalled. “I told them, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ That didn’t come from me. I don’t know what you’re saying.’ They were asking me if I knew about stuff that was going on outside of my workplace. I don’t. I was working. I don’t go out to other places.”
This didn’t stop Powell, who included a “Jane Doe” witness — Keliikoa presumably — on a witness list filed as part of an Arizona ballot lawsuit in support of Trump’s stop-the-steal effort. “Jane Doe,” Powell said at the time, would “testify about illegal ballots being shipped around the United States including to Arizona on or about before Nov. 3, 2020.”
No one was more disappointed by Keliikoa’s statement than Penrose.
“I thought when we exfil-ed her and we got her to write her affidavit, I thought we were going to have a goldmine of information,” he later told Burk, using the spy-craft term “exfiltrate” that means to furtively remove someone from a hostile area.
“There was no goldmine,” Penrose continued. “She had a picture of two ballot bags, and I asked her: ‘Would you know if ballots came across the tarmac from that Korea Air flight?’ And the answer was, ‘I just know what comes in this bay door from the USPS and what goes out these bay doors to get loaded on FedEx planes.’ So, the answer was there was no smoking gun per se with respect to that.”
The band breaks up
These days, few of the people involved want to discuss the Seattle ballot brouhaha, now revealed as a tangle of conspiracy theories, creative fantasies and outright lies — all in service to Trump’s goal of retaining presidential power that he was about to lose.
Reached by Raw Story earlier this month, Penrose’s lawyer John S. Irving said, “We don’t have anything to add.”
Keliikoa declined to comment to Raw Story for this story.
In an email to Raw Story last week, FedEx Media Relations said, “We do not have any comment at this time.”
Hurrington, the Marine Corps veteran who drove Keliikoa in the SUV, could not be reached for comment. Flohr also could not be reached for comment.
Some of the key players involved have also split up.
Keliikoa said in her deposition that one of the men who met her at the hotel told her it would “be in my best interest not to keep in contact” with Burk because she was a “troublemaker.”
Burk told Raw Story this month that Keliikoa had previously told her that it was Penrose who called her a “troublemaker,” but during her deposition, she claimed that she didn’t remember the names of anyone at the hotel.
“That was clearly projection since he was overseeing and directing a group of heavily armed former law enforcement holding my family and me hostage using fear and deception, who then spent months continuing to use that group to manipulate and malign my character to cover for their bad behavior,” Burk told Raw Story.
Flynn and Powell are both defendants in Burk’s lawsuit, along with former Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend. Burk accuses the defendants of civil rights violations, false imprisonment, assault, infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.
In a filing seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, Flynn’s lawyers wrote that Burk’s claims are “baseless” and “frivolous,” while denying that their client sent the security team to her house or that he intended that they hold her “hostage.”
But Flynn’s efforts to distance himself from Burk are belied by the fact that Flohr — aka “Yoda,” the ex-law enforcement volunteer dispatched to her home in Arizona — flanked Flynn as part of his security detail when he spoke at a pro-Trump rally in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., less than a week after he was at Burk’s house in December 2020.
Flynn is currently promoting a documentary movie that portrays him as a victim of political persecution, and Trump has hinted that he may bring his former national security adviser back to public service — and the taxpayer-funded payroll — should he win election to a second term.
Flynn did not respond to repeated requests for comment made by Raw Story through his lawyers.
Last year, Powell pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit intentional interference with performance of election duties in Georgia.
Burk is suing Koch for fraudulent misrepresentation, invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress in the Arizona state courts, separate from her federal claim against Flynn, Powell and Townsend. Representing herself, Burk deposed Keliikoa for her lawsuit against Koch. Last week, Burk filed a motion to consolidate her case against Koch with her federal lawsuit against Powell and Flynn.
Under cross-examination by Koch’s lawyer in March, Keliikoa downplayed her role in giving life to the “ballots on planes” theory.
“The only relevance I have is a lot of people got involved and it turned into, like I said before, a big s---show where a lot of people were involved that should have never even been there, that should have never been involved,” she said. “And I got thrown into the mix like everybody else. I was used as a pawn. That’s what makes me mad.”
Knowing what she knows now, Keliikoa said, she would have never agreed to write the affidavit.
“I thought people really wanted to help,” she said in her deposition. “And now I know otherwise.”
“Nobody really cares,” she added, “because everybody has their own objective.”
* * * * *
Key players
Staci Burk is a former school board member from Arizona who found herself in the middle of a conspiracy theory concerning illegal ballots and airplanes after the 2020 election.
Roland Hurrington is a Marine Corps veteran enlisted to pick up Sabrina Keliikoa at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport FedEx air freight terminal in December 2020.
Geoffrey Flohr, also known as “Yoda,” is a retired Michigan State Police officer who volunteered for the 1st Amendment Praetorian security group in late 2020 and early 2021. He used Staci Burk to track down Sabrina Keliikoa.
Michael Flynn is a retired lieutenant general who served as national security advisor for President Donald Trump before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI. Trump pardoned Flynn in November 2020, and Flynn emerged alongside Sidney Powell as a key player in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Sabrina Keliikoa is a former FedEx supervisor and QAnon adherent who claims to have been detained by a security team linked to Michael Flynn that obtained an affidavit about election ballots observed at her facility shortly around the time of the 2020 election.
Carissa Keshel was a volunteer who served as attorney Sidney Powell’s assistant in late 2020, as Flynn worked with Powell to overturn the 2020 election.
Kenneth Scott Koch is a security contractor formerly employed by Mayhem Solutions Group (now MSG Risk Management & Intelligence) who “fabricated” a story about his involvement in illegal ballot trafficking. Koch organized anti-lockdown protests in Arizona and was a member of the far-right group the Oath Keepers.
Jim Penrose is a cyber-security expert who worked for the National Security Agency under President Barack Obama. He traveled to Washington state to obtain an affidavit from Sabrina Keliikoa.
Sidney Powell is a former federal prosecutor who filed lawsuits in Arizona and other states seeking to overturn the 2020 election based on outlandish claims of voting fraud.
Kelly Townsend is a former Arizona state House member who told Staci Burk it was imperative that the “Seattle whistleblower” (now revealed to be Sabrina Keliikoa) come forward and report her suspicions about illegal ballot trafficking after the 2020 election.
Donald Trump is the former president of the United States who is again running for the presidency in 2024. Many of the actions described in this story were done in Trump’s name.
Shawn Wilson is the president of MSG Risk Management & Intelligence (formerly Mayhem Solutions Group). Jim Penrose told Staci Burk that he was initially concerned that Wilson, along with Kenneth Scott Koch, were “hostile actors” intent on harming Sabrina Keliikoa.
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and other "Morning Joe" panelists raised questions about misleading reports in right-wing media suggesting that president Joe Biden suffers from dementia.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a report quoting former House speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans who questioned Biden's mental fitness, which were then aired on local broadcasts by Sinclair Media affiliates, while the New York Post and other conservative outlets pushed a deceptive video that appeared to show the president wander off from a gathering of world leaders.
"Am I shocked?" Scarborough said. "Am I shocked that the story and a couple of stories have gotten to the Wall Street Journal like the day after Andrew Ross Sorkin reports that Donald Trump was just out of his mind and people were laughing at him and group of CEOs the next morning, you know? You got the Wall Street Journalgoing, CEOs love Donald Trump coming out of the -- no, it's just not true. I'm so shocked. I'm shocked by so few things in the political realm any more, the media realm, that I hate to say it, but I will say, yes, I am shocked and that is the the Wall Street Journal."
Scarborough typically recommends the Journal to conservative friends who might otherwise get their news coverage from unreliable sources, and he was disappointed to see the newspaper stoop to the same level as other outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch, and he and other panelists suggest the recent reports are being directed from the top.
"I'm not any believer in conspiracies, but I do believe in coordination and, boy, this parachute thing was so coordinated," said Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, referring to the video suggesting Biden wandered off, when instead he had turned his attention to some parachutists upon their landing. "I wondered what that was about and Karine Jean-Pierre said it smacked a desperation. I've got to admit that that occurred to me because there was a certain desperate feel to it. You just look at the clip from a different angle and it's obliterates the story they are trying to tell."
Scarborough wondered why news organizations would be so willing to shred their own credibility by publishing easily debunked falsehoods.
"They put this up knowing they are going to be called out as liars, knowing that there are other angles that are going to prove that they are lying to their audience, that it will be exposed," Scarborough said. "That they lie today but the sun is going to rise tomorrow and the fact are going to become clear. People will wake up and say, 'They were lying to us and, yet, they didn't care.' Maybe they thought their readers are stupid, maybe they thought our readers live in a fact-free echo chamber. I don't know what they thought, but whatever it was, they were undervaluing and underestimating their readers."
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will unveil Tuesday new protections for undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens and measures to make it easier for immigrants brought illegally as children to qualify for work authorization.
Undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will have had to have lived in the country for at least 10 years to qualify for protections. Qualified spouses could apply for permanent residency within three years and be eligible for a three-year work permit in the country. Couples will have to have been married and in the country for 10 years by Monday. Roughly 500,000 people nationwide could be eligible.
Undocumented spouses can already apply for permanent residency but must often leave the country in order to do so. The latest action would allow them to apply in the country.
The measures would also expedite work visas for eligible immigrants who arrived as children, commonly referred to as “Dreamers,” if they have a U.S. college degree or a “high-skill” job offer.
The White House anticipates applications opening by the end of the summer.
“These measures will help keep American families together and allow young people to contribute to our economy and our country,” a senior administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “These measures show that the administration is committed to taking action within its legal authorities to secure our border and ensure that our immigration system is more fair and more just.”
Still, the official continued, “we remain clear-eyed that only Congress can deliver the additional personnel, resources and policy changes that are needed to secure our border.”
The announcement comes days after the 12th anniversary of President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gave immigrants who came as children protected status from deportation. Biden plans to commemorate the anniversary Tuesday at the White House. Over 95,000 DACA recipients live in Texas, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Protections for DACA recipients has been a priority for Texas Democrats since Biden first took office in 2021. Texas Democrats in Congress pushed for the Dream and Promise Act, which would codify protections for migrants who came as children. The bill passed the Democratic-controlled House in early 2021 but did not make it out of the Senate.
Border Democrats were often frustrated with their party leadership for not prioritizing immigration in the early days of the Biden administration when the party controlled both chambers of Congress. The Biden White House focused much of its attention at the time on passing legislation improving domestic infrastructure and combating climate change. The border, members were told, would just have to wait.
But as record numbers of border crossings overwhelmed border cities, Republicans made it an issue Democrats could not ignore. The border has emerged as the single biggest priority among Texas Republicans going into November’s general elections.
Earlier this month, Biden took executive action that effectively shut down asylum claims made between ports of entry at the border. Many Democrats and immigrant rights advocates criticized the move as capitulating to Republicans.
“If this executive order goes into effect, it’s likely that every future president, especially Republicans, will use and expand it to choke off immigration and the right to asylum,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a statement at the time. “The political pressure to keep the ban in effect will be too overwhelming.”
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United Auto Workers members at an Ohio plant that produces battery cells for General Motors electric vehicles on Monday celebrated their overwhelming ratification of a contract that the union said "sets a new standard for the EV industry with strong wages and benefits and historic health and safety protections."
UAW Local 1112 members at Ultium Cells' Lordstown, Ohio facility approved their new local contract by 98% on Sunday. Under the contract, production workers will be paid $35 an hour by October 2027. Sunday's vote came after the workers at the plant—a joint venture between GM and South Korea-based LG Energy Solution—voted in December to unionize.
"This is setting a precedent that can be built on," said Ultium worker Chris Wyatt. "This is a guideline that every other EV plant can follow through with."
Another worker at the plant, Donald Bevly, said the new contract "enables me to just go ahead and move forward in life rather than living from paycheck to paycheck."
UAW president Shawn Fain said in a statement following the contract's tentative approval last week that "18 months ago, this company was on a low road path to poverty wages, unsafe conditions, and a dark future for battery workers in America."
"Ultium workers said, 'Hell no,' got organized, and fought back," Fain added. "Now they've more than doubled their wages by the end of this contract, won record health and safety language, and showed the world what it means to win a just transition."
As UAW noted:
When Ultium opened in 2021, the workers were nonunion, they made just $16.50 an hour, and the EV industry was in a race to the bottom. But the Ultium workers organized with the UAW in late 2022 and during the Stand Up Strike, they were brought under the GM national agreement.
In addition to $35 an hour, the new contract includes an immediate $3,000 bonus, four full-time on-site union health and safety representatives, and a full-time union industrial hygienist at the Lordstown plant.
In August 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden signed his signature climate and jobs law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for automakers to ramp up EV manufacturing. Fain has pressed Biden—who touts himself as the "most pro-union president in American history"—to ensure that workers can earn a decent living as part of a just transition from fossil fuel-powered to electric vehicles.
Referring to her new contract, Lordstown Ultium worker Lori Lovitz said that "the benefits are just the best benefits I've had in my life."
"Paid hospitalization, holiday pay," she added. "I've never had this many paid holidays. Job security."
Another worker at the plant, Janine Hooks, summed up her feelings about the new contract with a raised fist, saying, "UAW all the way!"
On Monday a U.S. district judge in Kentucky temporarily blocked the Biden administration's new Title IX protections for LGBTQ students in six states, bringing the total number of states the new rules will likely not go into effect August 1 to ten. Republican state attorneys general are fighting the Biden Dept. of Education policies that protect the minority students.
"U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves referred to the regulation as 'arbitrary in the truest sense of the word' in granting a preliminary injunction blocking it in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. His ruling comes days after a different federal judge temporarily blocked the new rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana," the Associated Press reports.
“The judge’s order makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education’s attempt to redefine ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity’ is unlawful and beyond the agency’s regulatory authority,” Kentucky state Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that in employment, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is sex discrimination, and therefore prohibited under Title VII. That 6-3 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County was authored by a right-wing justice, Neil Gorsuch.
Judge Reeves (photo), a Bush-43 appointee, began his ruling by writing, "There are two sexes: male and female."
"This case concerns an attempt by the executive branch to dramatically alter the purpose and meaning of Title IX through rulemaking," Reeves continued. "But six states, an association of Christian educators, and one fifteen-year-old girl object. As they correctly argue, the new rule contravenes the plain text of Title IX by redefining 'sex' to include gender identity, violates government employees’ First Amendment rights, and is the result of arbitrary and capricious rulemaking."
Louisville Public Media reports, "Reeves also said he believed the case would win on parental rights grounds."
“It follows that parents retain a constitutionally protected right to guide their own children on matters of identity, including the decision to adopt or reject various gender norms and behaviors,” Reeves wrote.
"Democrat-controlled states have widely supported the rule, and 16 Democratic attorneys general filed a joint amicus brief in one of the challenges," LPM adds.
Right wing anti-LGBTQ activist Riley Gaines cheered Monday's ruling: "Great news! Biden's illegal rewrite of Title IX won't go into effect in TN, KY, VA, WV, OH, & IN"
"A federal court granted an injunction for the Title IX lawsuit filed by mentioned states," she added. "This is a huge win. The gender ideology house of cards is falling fast."
But civil rights attorney Wendy Murphy responded, "Before you celebrate these 'advocates' remember that this lawsuit asks the court to REINSTATE Trump/DeVos 2020 #TitleIX regulations that ALLOW rape by requiring it to be BOTH 'severe AND pervasive.' So one rape at knifepoint is NOT covered by Title IX bc it wasn’t 'pervasive.' "
Jon Stewart on Monday night hit both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on "The Daily Show," lamenting that this year's presidential election features a pair of nominees so past their primes that each has accused the other of having "soup ... where there should be brain."
In his opening monologue, Stewart laid into Biden over a video — since debunked as misleading — that purported to show Biden wandering away during a G7 summit event in Italy late last week.
"For President Biden it is his habit of seemingly staring at what can only be considered ghosts or out-of-frame paratroopers," Stewart said. "And then, somehow getting pulled back into frame, somehow giving the impression someone has just quantum-leaped into his body."
Stewart jabbed again at the 81-year-old president putting on his sunglasses in the clip, remarking. "No don't look directly at the sun, sir."
But the comedian spent the next two minutes leveling the former president, saying Trump was "basically tripping over his own d--- anytime he tries to capitalize on Biden's age."
Stewart pointed to Trump's appearance in Detroit over the weekend at a "Turning Point Action" event — a group founded by conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk — as exhibit A of the MAGA leader's cognitive slide.
It was here where a snarky Stweart said Trump "articulated his case for having best, brainful neurons ... smart."
The show played a clip of Trump attempting to criticize Biden at the event with a perhaps elementary- or middle-school-style dig: "Joe Biden has no plan, he's got absolutely no plan. He doesn't even know what the word inflation means."
"Oh, oh you didn't!" Stewart yells to laughs before mocking Trump's ill-advised jab at Biden's comprehension of the economic metric.
"Joe Biden's so dumb," Stwart then deadpans, "he thinks inflation is a rise in the overall price level for goods and services in the economy as measured by the consumer price index over time. Oh s---!"
The comedian then jokes, "It turns out that is what is. I'm sorry. I'm being told that is what inflation is. But still! You tell him Donny T."
Stewart then launches into a devastating case against Trump.
"The case he's making to the American public is that he's sharpest tool in the shed. See if you can find the flaw in his logic just one sentence later."
The clip in question: Trump boasting about acing a cognitive test — and specifically shouting out his doctor, "Ronny Johnson." Only problem with that — his doctor was physician Ronny Jackson.
"Acing that cognitive test is a great point if only his doctor was named Ronny Johnson. And not actually named, Ronny Jackson. He got the guy's name wrong on his cognitive test!" Stewart said in disbelief.
He finished in classic Stweart fashion, ripping the Republican party for its seemingly never-ending faith in its fearless leader.
"The sad thing is under MAGA law, his name is now Ronny Johnson," said Stewart. "This is the way."
The White House on Monday criticized Republicans for spreading videos purported to show President Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline, saying the images had been deceptively cut and manipulated.
“It tells you everything that we need to know about how desperate Republicans are here,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, branding the clips as “cheapfake” videos.
Outlets including the New York Post and an official Republican social media account have shared several seemingly damning short videos in recent days of the 81-year-old president.
In one video, an apparently disoriented Biden appears to wander away from fellow world leaders while watching a skydiving display during a G7 summit in Italy last week.
But Jean-Pierre said the footage was misleadingly edited, and Biden instead was moving to give a thumbs up to the parachutists.
“This was widely fact checked … including by conservative media,” she said at a media briefing, adding “if you run that tape a little bit longer than you’d see … what was happening.”
Earlier in the week NBC also debunked the claim, posting footage caught by its own cameras from another angle online which showed Biden interacting with the parachutists just a few feet away.
Another widely-shared clip was a close-up shot of Biden standing still as world leaders danced close to him during a concert at the White House — which opponents said showed a state of confusion.
“The president stood there listening to the music, and he didn’t dance. Excuse me. I did not know not dancing was (…) a health issue,” Jean-Pierre said of the video.
And on the weekend, the New York Post again shared a video appearing to show Biden getting lost on stage during a fundraising event in California, before being pointed to an exit by former president Barack Obama.
Andrew Bates, another White House spokesman, said on X that Biden was instead waiting on the stage to appreciate the applause from his supporters.
And Eric Schultz, a senior Obama adviser, posted a link to the Post article on X, writing: “this did not happen."
Biden’s main rival in the November election, Republican Donald Trump, has made Biden’s advancing age one of his main campaign rallying points, trying to position himself as an energetic alternative — despite being, at 78, just three years younger.
Whoever wins the vote will set a new age record.
Biden is already the oldest man to hold the office and would continue to be so, while if Trump wins, he would become the oldest ever at an inauguration.
A campaign sign supporting Maryland Democratic Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks was defaced with racist threats, triggering a police investigation, The Washington Post reported Monday night.
"The defaced sign, which sits on a grassy median near a busy six-lane road in Prince George’s County, where Alsobrooks is county executive, had two additions in black ink: the letters 'KKK' near her hands and crosshairs drawn on her forehead," reported Lateshia Beachum and Erin Cox. "Prince George’s County Police Department public information officer Brian Fischer said on Monday that police are investigating the incident."
Alsobrooks, who is Black, won the nomination to replace outgoing Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin in a hotly contested primary with Congressman David Trone.
A spokesperson for Alsobrooks said the incident will not stop her: “Our paramount concern is Angela’s safety. However, this sort of hateful threat will not deter Angela or her campaign.”
Meanwhile, Alsobrooks' Republican opponent, former Gov. Larry Hogan, also put out a response on X: “Hate, threats of violence, and racism must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. They have no place in Maryland.”
Hogan served two terms as a relatively popular governor in Maryland; however, recent polling has shown Democrats with an advantage in a state that is essentially guaranteed to back President Joe Biden by a wide margin.
The vandalism and destruction of yard signs is a common crime in the lead-up to an election.
It is often committed by political opponents of the candidate who want to destroy or obscure signs of support. In some cases, more peculiar motivations turn out to be behind it. In 2020, a Florida man was arrested for destroying Trump yard signs; the suspect turned out to be a Trump supporter, who was upset that the signs were displayed next to Confederate battle flags and didn't want passersby to associate Trump support with racism.
Kari Lake's prognostications of future legal woes befalling former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden were blurred by hoopla over her choice of a vanity video filter.
"I see this whack job is back to using the shimmering golden C-3PO filter," reads a post by Republican strategist Jeff Timmer.
"Also known as 'glazed donut' filter," writes
@PartyUpNorth.
"It is unreal," she said during an appearance on Newsmax. "The hypocrisy of it all. "Then you think about what they did before President Trump ever got inaugurated. How they spied on his campaign. Think of Russiagate — I mean the things they actually have done is just unbelievable."
Lake appeared to denigrate the basis for former President Donald Trump's multiple criminal indictments.
So while Obama and Biden wait for some sort of fate, she said, "we're having this witch hunt play out."
Ultimately, Lake believes law enforcement efforts to bring cases against Trump will implode.
The cases include state and federal charges for riling mobs of supporters who descended on Washington D.C. in a protest and later rioted at the Capitol to thwart the certification of votes to then-President-Elect Joe Biden.
Also, he faces accusations of hoarding confidential documents taken from the White House, littering them around his Mar-a-Lago estate, and obstructing giving them back to the feds.
None of it will stick, according to Lake.
"I think President Trump will be exonerated at the end of the day," she said. "And I think more bad news will come out on I think Obama actually. As well as Joe Biden.
"The question is will we ever see justice."
But again, many who watched her commenting on the legal morass were caught up by the strange filter.
"Does every camera in her presence come pre-slathered in Vaseline," asked
@plantagenet_ja
@actingliketommy also called out Lake's "soft fuzzy filter of 'god'."
And
@SaintLaurant also chimed in: "Her apparition filter is working overtime."
@kingofkings0247 also questioned the need to blur an honest look: "Her filters give me a headache."
When the Wall Street Journal published a report earlier this month claiming it had spoken with Democrats regarding President Joe Biden's mental decline, the paper faced backlash from The White House, veteran journalists like Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, and others.
According to Deadline, Biden representatives slammed the WSJ for including only "one on-the-record Republican source, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to claim that the president is slipping."
During the latest episode of MSNBC's Deadline: White House Monday, host Nicolle Wallace spoke with former FBI counsel and legal analyst Andrew Weissmann and discussed the conservative newspaper's clear bias towards former President Donald Trump.
"The situation that I find the most vexing is that the things that Trump is saying about how he's going to tell [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to release [WSJ journalist] Evan Gershkovich when he's president are so cruel and so sickening."
Wallace added, "The fact that Trump has weaponized what will now be a show trial for Putin — he's going to be tried on espionage charges — the fact that there are no breakers in the circuits for the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, that there's no pride in what that paper is and does, really is a stunning sort of mile marker in that paper's evolution."
Weissman replied, "I have two words for everyone: David Pecker. We just sat through a trial where the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt with no cross-examination of any import of David Pecker, a friend of Donald Trump's to this day, the head of the National Enquirer, where he talked about — it wasn't just a catch and kill scheme."
The former FBI attorney emphasized, "There were two parts to this scheme: One part was to catch and kill bad stories about Donald Trump, and the other part was to create false stories for a political candidate. And those false stories were first run by the political candidate. That is David Pecker's testimony under oath about what he agreed to with Donald Trump."
Regarding the WSJ’s owner Rupert Murdoch, Weissmann continued, "That is just the new day David Pecker. And if you want to know that these are fake stories that are coming out and being propagated, we just went through a trial about that. Where the jury heard it and found — remember, that was why it's a felony, is that they believed David Pecker that there was this agreement. And so, you don't need to look very far and you don't need to sort of surmise what's going on with Donald Trump. He did this already."
When the Wall Street Journal published a report earlier this month claiming to include conversation with Democrats regarding President Joe Biden's mental decline, the paper faced backlash from The White House, veteran journalists like Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough, and others.
According to Deadline, Biden spokespersons slammed the WSJ for including only "one on-the-record Republican source, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to claim that the president is slipping."
During the latest episode of MSNBC's Deadline: White House Monday, host Nicolle Wallace spoke with former FBI counsel and legal analyst Andrew Weissmann discussed the conservative, billionaire Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper's clear bias towards former President Donald Trump.
"The situation that I find the most vexing is that the things that Trump is saying about how he's going to tell [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to release [WSJ journalist] Evan Gershgovich when he's president are so cruel and so sickening."
Wallace added, "The fact that Trump has weaponized what will now be a show trial for Putin — he's going to be tried on espionage charges — the fact that there are no breakers in the circuits for the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, that there's no pride in what that paper is and does, really is a stunning sort of mile marker in that paper's evolution."
Weissman replied, "I have two words for everyone: David Pecker. We just sat through a trial where the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt with no cross-examination of any import of David Pecker, a friend of Donald Trump's to this day, the head of the National Enquirer, where he talked about — it wasn't just a catch and kill scheme."
The former FBI attorney emphasized, "There were two parts to this scheme: One part was to catch and kill bad stories about Donald Trump, and the other part was to create false stories for a political candidate. And those false stories were first run by the political candidate. That is David Pecker's testimony under oath about what he agreed to with Donald Trump."
Regarding the Murdochs, Weissmann continued, "that is just the new day David Pecker. And if you want to know that these are fake stories that are coming out and being propagated, we just went through a trial about that. Where the jury heard it and found -- remember, that was why it's a felony, is that they believed David Pecker that there was this agreement. And so, you don't need to look very far and you don't need to sort of surmise what's going on with Donald Trump. He did this already."
Sabrina Keliikoa as seen during a legal deposition on March 22, 2024. (Source: Deposition 
Jim Penrose as described on the website of the Institute for World Politics in Washington, D.C. (Institute for World Politics.)