'King of the double indictment': Historian heaps scorn on Trump's legacy
March 20, 2023, 9:40 AM ET
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Kari Lake has once again filed her intent to appeal the outcome of her bid to overturn the results of Arizona’s 2022 gubernatorial election, after it failed in Maricopa County Superior Court.
This was the second time that Lake, a Republican who lost by 17,000 votes to Democrat Katie Hobbs, challenged the results of the election, lost that challenge and decided to appeal it.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson shot down Lake’s second challenge on May 22, following a three-day trial during which the judge determined Lake failed to prove that the election was stolen from her through the county’s failure to verify voter signatures.
Lake filed her intent to appeal his ruling to the Arizona Court of Appeals on May 31.
This trial was the result of Lake’s multiple appeals of her initial election challenge, which Thompson shot down in December. Lake appealed all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, which generally agreed with Thompson and the appeals court that Lake’s claims should be dismissed — except for one claim about signature verification on early ballots, which it remanded back to Thompson.
Maricopa County, along with the other defendants in the case — Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — asked that Thompson sanction Lake and her lawyers for “intentionally misrepresenting facts in front of the court.” Thompson on May 26 denied that request, writing that Lake’s failure to prove a claim did not mean her case was not made in good faith, as the defendants argued.
On the same day that Thompson denied sanctions for Lake and her attorneys, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Melissa Julian ordered more than $48,000 in sanctions for failed Secretary of State candidates Mark Finchem and his lawyer, for bringing a claim to the court alleging misconduct in the 2022 election and asking for a new election in the race for secretary of state.
The judge ordered Finchem to pay $40,272 to cover Fontes’ attorney fees to defend himself in the case. She also ordered Finchem’s attorney, Daniel McAuley III, to pay $7,434 in attorney fees for then-Secretary of State Hobbs, who was also named as a defendant in the suit. In her ruling, the judge called Finchem’s case “groundless.”
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Trump allies are 'chasing shadows' in Capitol riot footage – but not finding bombshells: analysis
June 06, 2023
Donald Trump's allies have been hunting for evidence to exonerate the former president and his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but one analyst said they've been "chasing shadows."
House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave access to surveillance footage from the riot to two Trump-backing writers, Julie Kelly and John Solomon, after giving video to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, but none of them have managed to produce a bombshell to "reshape the obvious reality of the day," wrote Washington Post columnist Philip Bump.
"It’s been a week since the world learned that Solomon and Kelly would get access to the tapes," Bump writes. "In an interview on June 2, Kelly said that Solomon, who got access earlier, was 'going to have some really bombshell revelations in the next several days here on key controversies of that day.'"
"So what has he reported?" Bump adds.
Solomon, whose reporting on Ukraine was central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment, has revealed that then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi was evacuated "Hollywood-style" from the Capitol, that a door into the Capitol was left open -- which had been reported in October 2021 -- and that footage shown by the House select committee had grafted audio onto silent surveillance video.
Kelly hasn't done any reporting since viewing the video but insists she's seen enough to mind-bendingly suggest the riot was presented as a violent threat to democracy to indict Trump for his role in that violent attack on the Capitol as lawmakers were certifying President Joe Biden's election win.
"The existence of this cache of footage from the Capitol is simply one of several things ... that the right believes will prove their political positions correct," Bump writes. "To date, scrutiny of the material by sympathetic actors has not done so by any objective measure. But perhaps it might, so right-wing voices can continue to hype that possibility and keep their audiences on the hook."
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'Shocked and deeply offended': 9/11 families condemn PGA deal with Saudi-backed golf group
June 06, 2023
The men's PGA agreed to merge with the LIV Golf tour in a huge announcement Tuesday – much to the chagrin of families of 9/11 victims that have spoken out against the Saudi-backed LIV group for months.
A statement posted by Semafor reporter Max Tani revealed the group is "shocked and deeply offended" by the merger. They explained that the LIV Golf league is "bankrolled by billions of sports washing money from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi operatives played a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and now it is bankrolling all of professional golf."
"PGA Commissioner Jay Monahan co-opted the 9/11 community last year in the PGA's unequivocal agreement that the Saudi LIV project was nothing more than sportswashing of Saudi Arabia's reputation," said 9/11 Families United Chair Terry Strada.
"But now the PGA and Monahan appear to have become just more paid Saudi shills, taking billions of dollars to cleanse the Saudi reputation so that Americans and the world will forget how the Kingdom spent their billions of dollars before 9/11 to fund terrorism, spread their vitriolic hatred of Americans, and finance al Qaeda and the murder of our loved ones. Make no mistake — we will never forget."
Last summer, Monahan made it clear that he was standing in solidarity with those who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, the statement continued. He even "wondered aloud on national television whether LIV Golfers ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour. They do now — as does he. PGA Tour leaders should be ashamed of their hypocrisy and greed. Our entire 9/11 community has been betrayed by Commissioner Monahan and the PGA as it appears their concern for our loved ones was merely window-dressing in their quest for money — it was never to honor the great game of golf."
Last summer, the families also protested Donald Trump bringing the LIV tournament to his country club. Trump said he'd never heard of the 9/11 families and claimed that no one officially knows who was involved with the hijacking of the planes.
The 9/11 report from the Commission report revealed 16 pages that were declassified in 2021 by President Joe Biden, showing that the hijackers had ties to Saudi nationals living in the U.S.
"The document, written in 2016, summarized an FBI investigation into those ties called Operation ENCORE," said a 2021 NPR report. "The partially redacted report shows a closer relationship than had been previously known between two Saudis in particular — including one with diplomatic status — and some of the hijackers. Families of the 9/11 victims have long sought after the report, which painted a starkly different portrait than the one described by the 9/11 Commission Report in 2004."
"We have not found evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two hijackers," the Commission wrote about Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy. Ten years later, the FBI said that Thumairy "tasked" someone else to help the hijackers once they arrived in Los Angeles. About a year before the attacks, they were referred to as "two very significant people."
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