Two Major Trump Corruption Plots Revealed in Just 24 Hours
https://newrepublic.com/post/212458/trump-lutnick-corruption-plots-kazakhstan-ice
Two Major Trump Corruption Plots Revealed in Just 24 Hours
Donald Trump—and his sons—have found new ways to profit off the presidency.
President Donald Trump and his family continue to dominate the field when it comes to corruption, with two new scandals exposed just within the last 24 hours.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the Trump family stands to reap the financial benefits of a deal that gives the U.S. access to one of the earth’s largest reserves of tungsten, a metal needed to make fighter jets, computer chips, and missile warheads.
American company Kaz Resources was awarded $1.6 billion in federal financing to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan. Just weeks after the deal was made, a firm partly owned by Trump’s sons joined up with other partners to take a 20 percent stake in a “corporate entity related to the Kazakhstan project,” the Times reported.
And it’s not just the Trumps—the sons of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was also involved in the deal, raised capital for one of the project’s investors, a move that is expected to net them millions of dollars.
Between the Trumps and the Lutnicks, one or both families have ties to at least 14 companies that are working with the federal government on mining deals, the Times reported.
And on Monday, CNBC reported that the president bought up to $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise, a company that makes tasers, body cameras, and other policing software, just two weeks before ICE sought a $220 million contract that only a company like Axon could fill.
Though the ICE notice doesn’t name Axon specifically, the company makes 90 percent of all U.S. tasers, and experts told CNBC that the weapons called for in the notice would only match Axon products. If ICE buys the roughly 17,800 tasers it seeks, it would quadruple its total tasers.
According to a White House spokesperson, there are “no conflicts of interest.” The White House has said that Trump’s investments are managed by independent, third-party firms, and that his children control his assets—as if his children aren’t routinely profiting off of government deals.
The amount which the Trump family has personally profited off of the presidency is unprecedented.
Pete Buttigieg Target of Vile Attack on His Young Family
The former secretary of transportation was the subject of a “cruel” call to Child Protective Services.
Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and his family were the victims of a false child protective services report, he wrote on his Substack Friday.
“Many times over the years, I have been denounced, yelled at, protested, threatened, and heckled. I’ve been through political attacks in office, death threats in public life, and rocket attacks in war. But this is the ugliest thing that has happened to me since my career in service began,” Buttigieg wrote.
Buttigieg said that earlier this week, a police officer and CPS worker showed up at his Traverse City, Michigan, home, where he lives with his husband, Chasten, and their twins, Joseph August and Penelope Rose. They told Buttigieg that a serious allegation had been made against him regarding his children, and that he couldn’t be alone with them until they received a forensic interview the next day, without him or any relatives present. Then they would discuss the allegations with the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor.
The officer and social worker wished to see the two 4-year-olds, so Buttigieg told them to wait until Chasten would be returning with the children from summer camp. When they arrived, the kids were fascinated by the police officer’s car, and the adults agreed that the children would stay with their grandparents overnight before their interview the next day.
“The twenty-four hours until they returned are among the darkest hours of my life. I tried to get my head around the idea that I had been accused of something so serious that I couldn’t be alone around my own children, and had consented to have them interviewed by strangers, without my knowing where the accusation had come from or even what it contained,” wrote Buttigieg.
After the children were interviewed, they went to stay with their grandparents, Buttigieg wrote, and then the police officer and CPS worker met him at his home for an interview. The officer said that an anonymous woman had contacted CPS, saying that she had met Buttigieg years ago at a conference in Alabama, who allegedly told her that he had committed “unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.”
The police officer asked if Buttigieg had been to a certain town in Alabama, to which he replied no, as well as “a couple of obvious questions.” After that, the officer said that he believed the accusation was politically motivated and that it would not be referred to a prosecutor. The CPS worker also said the allegation could not be substantiated, although her process would take longer to complete.
But Buttigieg was allowed to be alone with his children again, and Chasten was told the same information from the officer and CPS worker, and the two were able to pick up their children.
“For twenty-four deeply distressing hours, we had no idea what I was accused of or what was about to happen. We could not understand someone abusing the system like this in order to hurt me and my family with an absurd and easily refuted allegation of a horrific crime,” Buttigieg wrote.
“We’re used to nasty, hateful, and sometimes violent things being said about us and even about our family. But this is the first time someone managed to invade our lives like this—and drag our children into it,” Buttigieg added.
Buttigieg has been targeted by the right for his same-sex marriage and position within the Biden administration, facing false allegations of sexual assault in 2019 and, bizarrely, receiving mockery and criticism for taking paternity leave as a Cabinet secretary during the Biden administration. Making a false allegation and targeting a politician’s children is an egregious crime, and should be roundly condemned across the political spectrum. Let’s see if conservatives actually do the right thing.
The Trump Administration’s War on Dissent Has a New Target
After anti-ICE protesters were hit with sentences ranging from 30 to 50 years, the administration is now targeting Cop City demonstrators in Atlanta.
After successfully prosecuting anti-ICE protesters in Texas and giving them long prison sentences, the Trump administration has its next free speech targets.
The government is looking to prosecute protesters against the Cop City project in Atlanta, The Guardian reports. The $109 million police training center in Georgia has faced heavy opposition from activists against police militarization and the clearing of a forest to build the facility. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice indicted two protesters for allegedly attacking a contractor for the facility and two of its employees.
The federal indictments come despite the fact that Georgia authorities have tried and failed to bring cases against protesters. In August 2023, the state attorney general tried to bring a RICO indictment against three protesters in Fulton County, only for that case to be dismissed more than two years later in December. In April, state prosecutors tried again in neighboring Cobb County, only for a judge to dismiss that case on Monday.
The DOJ may be emboldened by the March guilty verdicts from its Texas case, referred to as Prarieland, against protesters who were demonstrating against an ICE detention facility. On Tuesday, Texas activists received prison sentences of more than 50 years in prison based on terrorism charges, with the Trump administration claiming they were part of an “antifa cell.”
Just like in Texas, the Cop City protesters set off fireworks, giving the Trump administration the same justifications to invoke terrorism charges.
“The Cobb county protest matches the narrative of what they’re looking for. It’s similar to what they did with Prairieland—they’re crafting a certain narrative on protests and trying to indict based on the narrative,” Xavier de Janon, an attorney for one of the Georgia protesters, told The Guardian.
“Fireworks become explosives. Communities become ‘antifa cells.’ The power of language is going to become central to everything the government is doing moving forward,” said filmmaker and author Will Potter, who researches government responses to protests, to the publication.
DOJ Watchdog Opens Floodgates With Release of Russia Probe Transcripts
The Department of Justice watchdog is reportedly giving Republicans access to highly sensitive information related to the investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election.
Trump’s Department of Justice’s inspector general has handed Senate Republicans highly sensitive interview transcripts concerning its report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In response to mounting pressure from Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the DOJ’s inspector general in March began releasing transcripts regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Bloomberg Law reported Friday.
The DOJ’s inspector general office warned senators about the “potential for a chilling effect on whistleblowing, and on the cooperation of witnesses,” should the contents of the interviews become public, but has no power to actually prevent the release of sensitive information.
The shocking disclosure comes as the Trump administration and its allies have made clear their interest in uncovering improprieties of the FBI’s original investigation into collusion.
In 2019, the DOJ’s inspector general found that the FBI’s investigation was dysfunctional and marred by serious errors—but was in no way a biased plot against Trump. Now Republicans are hoping to pore over the raw interviews in the hopes of cherry-picking pieces to malign attorneys and agents, possibly in order to get paid from a future “anti-weaponization” slush fund.
This latest move indicates the DOJ watchdog’s startling lack of independence in the face of the Trump administration’s political objectives. It also will likely discourage government employees and whistleblowers—who can be sure that their government is not committed to safeguarding their disclosures—from participating in future investigations.
Trump Is Clearly Rattled by What Mamdani Just Did in New York
President Trump seems agitated after Zohran Mamdani’s big wins in New York this week—from DSA election victories to the rent freeze.
President Donald Trump spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition policy conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, but seemed hyperfixated on something that has nothing to do with neither faith nor freedom: New York City’s rent freeze.
“Mayor Mamdani—who came to the White House and seems like a nice guy—he said he was going to do this in his campaign. Nobody thought he was serious,” Trump said.
On Thursday, New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board passed a rent freeze, enabling Mayor Zohran Mamdani to make good on one of his key campaign promises. The freeze will go into effect in October, and will impact tenants living in the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments.
“First time ever, with a ruling, zero rent increases for landlords … despite the fact that energy, supplies, real estate taxes, and just about everything else has gone up,” Trump said. “They’re basically confiscating their property.”
Contrary to what Trump said, rent freezes in NYC have been enacted in the past, most recently for three years under Mayor Bill de Blasio. But he’s right that prices are rising, partially due to his bungled tariffs and the war in Iran.
“What the mayor doesn’t say is that these buildings will soon turn into ghettos and slums, and that everybody will continue leaving New York. And as this spreads throughout the country very much like an uncontrollable form of cancer, the country itself will be taken down,” the president said.
Later in the speech, Trump went on to attack Mamdani’s DSA allies who won the Democratic primary in New York this week. “They will close your churches in this country, big old communists, and they’re trying to. They will kill your people…. This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding, in my opinion, 250 years ago, what’s happening right now. It’s the greatest threat.”
“They’re animals, they’re animals. In many cases, they’re not smart, but in some cases they are.”
It’s obvious that Trump is nervous, but maybe Mamdani’s rent freeze is just hitting a little too close to home for the NYC slumlord. In the 90s, Trump worked with his father to scam tenants in rent-regulated buildings, raising their rents while funneling money to each other, as uncovered by the New York Times in 2018. And in the 1980s, he made life a living hell for his rent-regulated tenants, trying to force them out of their homes so that he could tear down the building and make condos.
Billionaire Leon Black Subpoenaed After Dodging Epstein Questions
The House Oversight Committee is going after Leon Black after he refused to answer questions or properly explain his $158 million in payments to Jeffrey Epstein.
Billionaire investor Leon Black received two subpoenas Friday after he refused to answer questions about NDAs he’d allegedly signed with women in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit.
“I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking,” Black began in the House Oversight Committee during his closed-door testimony. “I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with, and had no knowledge of, any of Epstein’s heinous conduct.”
The proceedings were derailed when House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer subpoenaed Black after he and his lawyer insisted he could not discuss the terms and contents of certain nondisclosure agreements, according to MSNOW.
Prior to the interview, Comer said he was “pretty confident” that Black had allegedly signed NDAs with survivors of Epstein’s abuse. The chair issued two subpoenas, one compelling Black to appear for a deposition on July 16, and another requiring him to produce the NDAs. Black left the interview after only an hour.
The billionaire former CEO of Apollo Global Management departed from his role in 2021 after an internal review discovered he’d made $158 million in payments to Epstein for financial advice between 2012 and 2017. In 2023, Black was accused of raping a 16-year-old at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse two decades earlier.
Black defended his choice to do business with Epstein after he became a convicted sex offender. “Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not,” Black said. (Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008.)
Still, Black insisted he knew nothing of Epstein’s heinous sexual misconduct.
“I knew Jekyll. I didn’t know Hyde,” said Black.
Mike Johnson Spells Out the Democratic Socialist Platform Perfectly
Republicans’ fearmongering is off to a rough start after a series of DSA election wins.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson tried to fearmonger by … just reading the Democratic Socialists of America’s agenda out loud.
At the Faith & Freedom Coalition policy conference Friday, Johnson warned of a “dangerous trend” he’s observed: “Little mini Mamdanis popping up all over the country, running for Congress.”
Earlier this week, DSA-backed candidates saw huge wins in New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s sway seems to be holding strong.
And apparently, nothing is scarier to Republicans than the DSA platform.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen this,” said Johnson.
“This is their platform, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published about a day or two ago.… They put this on paper! They’re saying the quiet things out loud.”
Johnson continued: “Abolish the Electoral College, replace the two-party system with a multi-party ‘democracy,’ expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked-choice voting in all elections,” Johnson said.
He continued, describing how the DSA would establish public ownership of large corporations, abolish ICE, and end sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.
“End all military and economic aid to Israel, prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza,” Johnson continued.
It should be noted that while the DSA does support most of these points in its official platform, there is a debate about others, like ranked-choice voting and the merits of abolishing the Senate. But all in all, Johnson appears to be trying to fearmonger by threatening the American people with a good time.
Judge: Acting Trump A.G. “Conceded” Violating Law on Epstein Files
A federal judge ruled that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche did not “respond substantively” to arguments that he had violated the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that the Department of Justice admitted to breaking the law by failing to release the majority of its files on Jeffrey Epstein to the public, giving acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a week to release more information.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his opinion that Blanche failed to address allegations from journalist Katie Phang that the Trump administration failed to release the files in full. Phang sued the DOJ in April over a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed last year.
“The Attorney General does not respond substantively to any of these arguments,” Sullivan said in his ruling. “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction giving Blanche one week to release information redacted from the files, including names, or provide detailed reasons for the redactions. Some of the files in question include the FBI’s notes from interviews with a woman who accused President Trump of assaulting her in the 1980s as a 13-year-old.
The files covered by the injunction also include email exchanges with Epstein concerning an alleged “torture video” and sex acts with minors; the names of co-defendants from a draft indictment; the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators and DOJ employees who sent messages about them; and information in “foreign languages” that the DOJ said it couldn’t translate and redact.
The DOJ has said in the past that its unreleased Epstein files were not verified, and contained “unfounded and false” claims about Trump. But the law passed by Congress leaves few exceptions, and now Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, will have to answer for why some of the files remain hidden.
“The government ignored its own law and blew off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich,” said Brendan Ballou, Katie Phang’s attorney, to Politico. “Doing so had consequences, and now the public will finally get transparency around Jeffrey Epstein and his network.”
Texas Republicans Set to Force Kids to Study Bible in Schools
The state Board of Education, controlled by Republicans, is on the verge of requiring millions of students in Texas to study Bible stories.
Texas is poised to make the Bible required reading for five million public school students.
The Texas State Board of Education is expected to vote Friday to approve legislation to scrap teaching about “World Cultures” and make Bible stories and verses a permanent part of the K-12 curriculum—a blatant violation of the separation between church and state.
Critics of the measure argue that the changes risk alienating children from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds and infringe on the ability of parents to guide their children’s moral and religious education, CNN reported.
If the proposed reading list is approved, primary school-aged students would be taught stories like Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Middle school students would study the Shepherd Psalm from the Book of Psalms, as well as the religious writings of poets like Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. High schoolers would read from the second chapter of Genesis, detailing the creation of Adam and Eve—a story that exists across multiple religions but in vastly different forms.
Students would be able to opt out of these lessons, but as the texts would be made a part of the official curriculum, that could potentially affect their grades.
The proposed curriculum would only allow the use of verses from specific Bible translations, including the King James Bible, which is not embraced by the Roman Catholic Church but is widely used by Protestant and Evangelical churches, according to CNN.
In 2023, Texas became the first state to allow the hiring of chaplains in schools, and the next year the state offered extra money to public schools willing to provide optional Bible instruction. Last year, Texas became the largest of a slew of red states to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
These newest proposed changes come as President Donald Trump’s administration takes up the guise of “Christian nationalism”—while practicing policies that aren’t very Christian or particularly nationalist.
Stephen Miller Insists Haiti is Safe “for Haitians.” It Isn’t.
After a horrific SCOTUS ruling, the Trump administration is hoping to send hundreds of thousands to a nation controlled by armed gangs.
The Supreme Court’s Thursday decision to allow President Trump to end Temporary Protected Status protections for Haitian immigrants in the U.S. is being celebrated across the Trump administration, despite continued violence plaguing Haiti.
White House adviser Stephen Miller was asked by a reporter shortly after the ruling if the administration considers “Haiti a safe country.” His answer didn’t address any concerns.
“For Haitians? Absolutely,” Miller said, failing to say whether he thought the country was safe in general. “Haitians live in Haiti. It’s not of our position that Haitians should leave Haiti. It’d be crazy for us to say that Haitians couldn’t live in Haiti. It’s their country.”
When Fox News asked James Percival, general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, on Friday morning if Haitians losing their TPS status would get a grace period before having to leave the U.S., Percival echoed Miller’s callousness.
“President Trump has been trying to end these programs for nine years, so these people have been on notice for nine years that this day is coming. So what we would say now is that it’s closing time, which means you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here. The good news is it’s not too late to get a $2,600 check and a free flight home,” Percival said.
Haiti’s security situation is very unstable. The FAA has barred U.S. flights from landing in the capital, Port-au-Prince, until at least September, citing risks from armed groups. In 2024, three commercial jets were hit by gunfire in the country. Armed gangs control the country, with no president in power or election scheduled.
Haiti’s national soccer team even had to play their World Cup qualification matches outside of the country in Curaçao because gangs had taken over the national football stadium in Port-au-Prince. Haiti still made it to the World Cup, even hanging with powerhouse Morocco for three-quarters of their third match before succumbing 4-2 and being eliminated from the tournament.
But despite the security situation in Haiti, the Trump administration doesn’t think Haitians deserve asylum in the U.S., and thinks that Haitian Americans without citizenship or permanent residency can just pick up and go even if they’ve built lives or started families.
“People are running away from their homes,” said Don Deedson Louicius, a striker for the Haitian national team and professional player for FC Dallas in the U.S., to ESPN in November. He grew up near the Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince and still has family there.
“They can’t live well, and all the places are closed because of the gangs, and violence is crazy.”
