Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
Stories Chosen For You
Billionaire Twitter takeover backer was on coup planning call with Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity: report
May 20, 2022
Billionaire Larry Ellison participated in a phone call with some of Donald Trump's biggest supporters discussing efforts to keep the former reality TV star in office despite the fact he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, according to a new report.
"Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and chairman of the software company Oracle and the biggest backer of Elon Musk’s attempted Twitter takeover, participated in a call shortly after the 2020 election that focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote, according to court documents and a participant," The Washington Post reported Friday. "Ellison’s participation illustrates a previously unknown dimension in the multifaceted campaign to challenge Trump’s loss, an effort still coming into focus more than 18 months later."
The newspaper reported that also on the call were Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC), Fox News personality Sean Hannity, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow and far-right attorney James Bopp, Jr.
"Ellison is the 11th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of about $85 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He became a major political power broker during the Trump administration, hosting the president in 2020 for a fundraiser at his estate in California’s Coachella Valley and contributing millions to Republican candidates and committees, including to Graham, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission," the newspaper reported.
The existence of the call was revealed by a message sent by Graham.
"Ellison’s participation in the call was confirmed by a participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. This person said Ellison, as a technology executive, may have been enlisted to assess claims about voting machines made by Sidney Powell, a onetime member of Trump’s legal team. And the person said the GOP megadonor was probably looped in by Graham, as part of a discussion about whether the Trump campaign had assembled an effective legal team," the newspaper reported.
The newspaper noted Oracle donated $499,000 to the Federalist Society in 2019.
"Ellison personally has invested significantly in Republican candidates and causes," the newspaper reported. "This month, Ellison pledged $1 billion to support Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That makes him the largest single backer of the bid, which has been cheered by Trump allies because of comments Musk and his associates have made about loosening rules on content moderation and possibly letting the former president back on the platform."
Ellison is on the board of directors of Musk's Tesla.
"He owns nearly all of the Hawaiian island of Lanai," The Post noted.
Read the full report.
CONTINUE READING
Show less
Privileged South Carolina teen rapist violated house arrest 50 times before trial -- because he was 'depressed'
May 20, 2022
On Friday, The Daily Beast reported that Bowen Turner, the highly-connected Orangeburg, South Carolina teenager given an unusually lenient sentence after pleading guilty in a rape case, violated the terms of his house arrest as many as 50 times in four months ahead of his trial.
According to his lawyer, Democratic state Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto, he only did it because he was feeling "depressed".
"Bowen Turner, 19, was placed under strict home confinement by Judge George McFaddin, who specifically told him he could leave only to meet with his attorneys or for medical appointments, and that he was 'not to go shopping, go to any malls, any vacations, day vacations to the beach. It’s there and back. There will be no frolicking on those trips,'" reported Justin Rohrlich. "Yet, Turner’s GPS monitor caught him playing golf, going shopping, and eating out."
According to the report, Hutto "tried to explain away the transgressions in an email to McFaddin, claiming, 'As part of the therapy for his depression, [Turner’s] doctor told his parents that he needed to get out of the house just a little bit.'"
IN OTHER NEWS: 'Coup memo' author threw Trump under the bus in new court filing: Nicolle Wallace
Turner, whose father is employed by a local prosecutor, was re-arrested earlier this month after a disorderly conduct incident at a bar, including underage drinking and telling a police officer he would "bite [his] f**king finger off" if forced to wear a mask.
The strangely mild sentence for Turner, who allegedly raped three teenage girls in three counties over the course of a two-year period, has become a focus of national controversy.
CONTINUE READING
Show less
MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Thursday said that efforts by lawyer John Eastman to protect himself further implicated Donald Trump as the ringleader of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.
"John Eastman, the attorney who architected Donald Trump’s last-ditch legal strategy to overturn the 2020 election, revealed Friday that he routinely communicated with Trump either directly or via 'six conduits' during the chaotic weeks that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol," Politico reported Friday. "In a late-night court filing urging a federal judge to maintain the confidentiality of his work for Trump, Eastman provided the clearest insight yet into the blizzard of communications between Trump, his top aides, his campaign lawyers and the army of outside attorneys who were working to help reverse the outcome in a handful of states won by Joe Biden."
Eastman is seeking to convince U.S. District Court Judge David Carter to shield his conversations from the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Eastman says he received “two hand-written notes from former President Trump about information that he thought might be useful for the anticipated litigation.”
READ MORE: Adam Schiff prosecutes the case against Ginni Thomas on MSNBC after 'stunning' revelations
Wallace described how she perceived the dynamics.
She said Eastman, "who from the outside, it looks like he's trying to strengthen attorney-client privilege claims, but in doing so, he seems to either wittingly or unwittingly be throwing Donald Trump under the bus as the architect of the coup. He's alleging that, I guess, everything he did was in direct consultation with and after conversations and handwritten notes from Donald Trump."
"How does the 1/6 committee view those revelations?" she asked New York Times reporter Luke Broadwater.
"Yeah, it's really a fascinating court filing from John Eastman, where he says that he spoke directly to President Trump as they were coming up with some of these legal theories to try to overturn the election," he replied.
IN OTHER NEWS: Trump-endorsed GOP candidate says she'd 'absolutely' vote to ban all birth control
"Now, we know Donald Trump called John Eastman into the Oval Office and the two of them together attempted to pressure Mike Pence and then later Mike Pence's attorney, lead attorney, to go along with the plan to overturn the election throughout legitimate votes or delay the certification of the votes to give state legislatures the chance to install pro-Trump electors and put Donald Trump in office for a second term," he explained.
"But yeah, I mean, he directly names Donald Trump here as being one of the people who directed this plan and came up with it, and you know, I do think this is a fascinating revelation," Broadwater noted.
Watch the clip below or at this link.
Nicolle Wallace www.youtube.com
CONTINUE READING
Show less
Copyright © 2022 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | For corrections or concerns, please email corrections@rawstory.com.
{{ post.roar_specific_data.api_data.analytics }}