Gun manufacturer Sig Sauer was fined a $19,000 "civil penalty" by the Federal Election Commission for an illegal 2020 donation to Gun Owners Action Fund, a pro-gun industry super PAC that spent in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat current Georgia Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Although the fine was for the 2020 election, it was handed down by the Federal Election Commission in April and just made public in January.
Loeffler was under scrutiny across the state of Georgia as a co-owner of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream whose conservative and racially hostile political views drew scrutiny from the team's players, who openly stumped for her Democratic opponents.
Sig Sauer has not made a public comment on the civil penalty.
Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to make his first court appearance Tuesday in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, CNN’s Evan Perez reports.
Trump, who on Thursday became America’s first former president to be indicted, is scheduled to appear briefly before Judge Juan Merchan.
“Right now the plan is for him to be presented before a judge to hear what these charges are,” Perez said.
The secret service has been working with local law enforcement in New York in planning for the former president’s court appearance in New York.
“This is expected to be a very short thing, only 10 minutes,15 minutes. It's very rudimentary and they expect, or they anticipate that they can get him in and then get him out before there's any danger that is posed to the former president,” Perez said.
“Right now the plan is for him to be presented to a judge on Tuesday to hear what these charges are.”
In a panel discussion with legal analyst Jen Taub, reporter Brian Karem, former RNC staffer Kurt Bardella and Dr. Mary Trump, the group reacted to the news that former President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on Thursday.
Bardella explained that despite Trump's desperation to go after District Attorney Alvin Bragg, it was a majority of the grand jury who agreed that the evidence was such that it necessitated an indictment.
However, it was Dr. Mary Trump that began talking about the violence she worries as the indictment heads to trial.
Bardella agreed, noting that the next move for Trump's supporters is a big action to scare people away from coming after their leader.
"I shudder to think what that’s going to look like," he confessed.
Dr. Trump echoed the same sentiment, noting that Trump supporters are the same people that see a mass shooting with children being killed and they're ready for more guns.
Karem was full of glee. He lamented that he's spent four years being threatened and brow-beaten by Trump's "minions," and now there is some semblance of justice.
"It's now some measure of sanity that he was indicted," said Karem.
Dr. Trump agreed, saying that it was the sense of justice that she is witnessing, but ultimately "it may not be enough" for all of those who have been wronged by Donald Trump.
"It may not be enough for all of those contractors he's stiffed," she said. "It may not be enough for the people he kept from renting in his apartment building simply because they are Black because he's such a f*cking racist. It definitely not be enough for all of the people who died from COVID because of him. But it's a start. And it isn't nothing. And we need to hang onto that."
Karem wanted to hang the mug shots on his wall.
Dr. Trump brought up leading Republicans like Nikki Haley, Jim Jordan and Ron DeSantis — arguing they knew about as much as the rest of America about what is in the sealed indictments.
"They are united in their anti-democratic, pro-autocratic push to destroy this country. Let's just — I'm not being glib. Donald said it explicitly: 'They are coming for us,'" Dr. Trump said.
Watch the full panel discussion below or at this link.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to defeat the charges secured by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Thursday. And some analysts have argued that of all the criminal investigations into the former president, including the federal January 6 case, the classified documents probe, and the Georgia election interference investigation, the Stormy Daniels probe was the least consequential of them all.
But contrary to all of that, CNN's Kaitlan Collins argued, this is the case he most desperately wanted not to be litigated in public.
"It certainly is a very, very dramatic and historic moment," said anchor Wolf Blitzer. "What else are you learning?"
"The [former] president's legal team had been bracing for this ... they knew that this was likely something that could happen," said Collins. "So the question is what happens next because his attorneys have said that he will surrender that he will fly his plane here to New York to go through the next steps, where he's going to be fingerprinted and photographed for the next steps of what an indictment looks like. We don't know how soon that will happen. It could take several days."
"I think we have heard this refrain from some people in recent days that say he actually wants to be indicted. They think it'll be good for him," said Collins. "He does not want to be indicted, certainly not for this case. This is one of the most personally sensitive situations for him. It was ever when he was in the White House, and there was reporting on this on a daily basis on who made these payments and who knew about these payments. Because it involves allegations about an affair, and it was something that greatly bothered the First Lady, Melania Trump, at the time, and so it is a very sensitive case actually for trumpet."
"I think the idea that he wanted to be indicted does not match with any of the reporting that I've had," she added. "But it is a historic nature that he is now the first U.S. president, former U.S. president to face criminal charges."
