Areeba Shah, Salon

Mark Pomerantz, a former senior prosecutor on the Manhattan district attorney's team investigating former President Donald Trump and his organization's business dealings, said there are "many bits and pieces of evidence" the district attorney could use to bring criminal charges against the former president.

Pomerantz made the comments in a "60 Minutes" interview promoting a new book about his time investigating Trump, in which he compares him to John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family, also known as the "Teflon Don" who died in prison in 2002.

"If you take the exact same conduct — and make it not about Donald Trump and not about a former president of the United States, would the case have been indicted? It would have been indicted in a flat second," Pomerantz told CBS News' Bill Whitaker....

The state House elections committee last week voted to pass House Bill 2308 – a bill that would bar any future secretary of state from overseeing and confirming the results of an election if they are a candidate. The bill comes after then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs won the gubernatorial election in November.

"There's a lack of confidence from some of my constituents in the election itself," Republican state Rep. Rachel Jones of Tucson, who presented the bill, said during the committee meeting. "I think the optics of that – of a secretary of state running their own election for governor and then certifying that election was a major concern."

State Rep. Melody Hernandez, a Tempe Democrat, questioned why the bill was being presented now but wasn't a concern when GOP Secretaries of State Ken Bennett and Michele Reagan were on the ballot in 2014 and 2018. ...

More than a dozen donors who contributed significant amounts of money to George Santos' 2020 congressional campaign do not appear to exist, an investigation by Mother Jones found.

Santos' campaign reported that Victoria and Jonathan Regor had each contributed $2,800 to his first bid for a House seat, but after searching through various databases, Mother Jones found that no one in the United States with such names exist.

The apparent donors listed their address as 45 New Mexico Street in Jackson Township, New Jersey, but even that was questionable since the numbers on New Mexico Street in Jackson end in the 20s. ...

Republicans are speculating whether Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., might retire from Congress and shrink Speaker Kevin McCarthy's, R-Calif., narrow margins after losing the Ways and Means chairmanship, Puck's Tara Palmeri reported.

Buchanan was reportedly angry at McCarthy and accused him of sabotaging his candidacy for the committee chairmanship after he was passed over as the most senior person on the committee by Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., a member who was fifth in line.

While votes for chairman were being counted, Buchanan walked over to McCarthy and said, "You fucked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me," according to Puck News. ...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., criticized former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard — now a Fox News host —for giving embattled GOP Rep.-elect George Santos "zero grace" in a recent interview during which Gabbard questioned Santos' integrity over extensive fabrications on his résumé.

Gabbard was filling in for Tucker Carlson on his Fox News primetime show when she interviewed Santos after he admitted to falsifying multiple aspects of his biography, including his educational and professional background and his alleged Jewish ancestry.

"If I were one of those in New York's 3rd District right now, now that the election is over, and I'm finding out all of these lies that you've told, not just one little lie or one little embellishment — these are blatant lies — my question is, do you have no shame?" Gabbard asked Santos Tuesday evening. "Do you have no shame? And the people ... you're asking to trust you to go and be their voice for them, their families and their kids in Washington?"...