Trump Dismantles CNN Fake News Machine at Town Hall

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Donald Trump used CNN to mop up the floor of a Town Hall in New Hampshire, deriding the fake news network for peddling disinformation and drawing loud cheers for his takes on everything from illegal immigration, abortion and the Second Amendment to pardoning J6 political prisoners and restoring election integrity.

“It took 25 mins and a member of the audience to ask Trump a single policy question. On our collapsed economy and skyrocketing inflation. All CNN wanted to do was push drama,” tweeted Human Events editor Jack Posobiec. But when the talk turned to policy, Trump turned up the heat, ripping the Biden regime’s open borders and the predicted chaos of ending Title 42.

At several points during the Wednesday night event, Trump scolded moderator and network anchor Kaitlan Collins for her constant interruptions and distortions of his views.

“You’re a nasty person, I’ll tell ya,” Trump cracked at one point, drawing guffaws and cheers from the audience, in a retort sparked by a Collins harangue on why the former president had kept documents from his White House tenure.

“It’s very simple. I was negotiating and we were talking to NARA – that’s Washington, to bring whatever they want,” Trump tutored the anchor about his interaction with the National Archives.

“They can have whatever they want. When we left Washington, we had the boxes lined up on the sidewalk outside for everybody,” Trump said. “They brought them down to Mar-a-Lago. We were negotiating with NARA. All of a sudden, they raid our house.”

The tutorial continued when Trump eviscerated Collins’s distortions about the former president’s actions during the J6 protests. When the anchor shamelessly pushed the fake news narrative that Trump didn’t respond appropriately and fomented violent insurrection, he literally brought receipts; in this case, what reportedly were tweets that showed him encouraging supporters to protest peacefully.

Trump said he would be inclined to grant pardons to a majority of J6 protesters who have been “persecuted” by the Biden Justice Department.

“I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control,” Trump said, while noting the damage, death and destruction caused by Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters that had been given a free pass.

“I’m not trying to justify anything, but you have two standards of justice in this country,” Trump said of the J6 protesters who have been turned into political prisoners.

While calling the Capitol Police officer “a thug” who shot and killed peaceful protester Ashli Babbitt, the former president said justice once again was not served.

Trump doubled-down on calling the 2020 presidential tilt a “rigged election,” pointing not only to mounting evidence of vote fraud, but also to the role of deep state fabulists who pushed the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation.

“That was a rigged election and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country, all over the world they looked at it and they saw exactly what everyone else saw,” said Trump, who called for increased election integrity with Voter ID and a stop to fraud-laced mail-in voting and ballot harvesting.

“If you just look recently with the 51 intelligence agents, that made a 16-point difference. If you look at the FBI and Twitter, they call it Twitter files, it made a big difference,” Trump said of impacts that compromised the 2020 election.

Trump played into the role of senior statesman when pressed on the topic of resolving the Ukraine/Russia war, declaring he could end it in short order.

“If I am president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours,” said Trump. When asked if he wanted Ukraine to win the war, the former president showcased his diplomatic prowess.

“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled, so we stop killing all these people,” Trump said. “I want everyone to stop dying. They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done … in 24 hours, I’ll have it done. You need the power of the presidency to do it.”

When CNN’s Collins tried to end the Town Hall with a scripted gotcha question, asking Trump if he would accept the results of the 2024 race, the former president again broke out his media chops and tossed a hard right jab.

“Yeah, if I think it’s an honest election. Absolutely I would,” Trump said. “And you know what, if I don’t win, this country’s going to be in big trouble.”

Trump ended the night in much the same manner it started, with a cheering audience in rapture and a fake news network in tatters.

Santos Rips ‘Witch Hunt’ Charges, Calls Out Biden Family

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Embattled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., is pushing back against calls for his resignation amid 13 federal indictments on charges including unemployment benefits, embezzling campaign funds and lying on congressional finance disclosure records.  

The 34-year-old freshman lawmaker pleaded not guilty and dubbed the federal charges as a “witch hunt,” claiming he will not step down despite numerous demands from bipartisan lawmakers that he quits from office.

“You have Joe Biden’s entire family receiving deposits from—nine family members receiving money from foreign destinations into their bank accounts. It’s been years of exposure,” Santos said, later adding that the charges were a political hit job.

“I’m going to fight,” the congressman continued. “I’m going to fight my battle. I’m going to deliver. I’m going to fight the witch hunt. I’m going to take care of clearing my name and I look forward to doing that.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., partially defended Santos, issuing a careful statement about the indictment. 

“As you know, with George Santos, I did not put him on any committees,” McCarthy said, later pointing out leftist Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who faced a criminal indictment on conspiracy, bribery and fraud in 2015. Menendez, who was cleared after the jury deadlocked and prosecutors refused to re-try, is under federal investigation once again.

Echoing McCarthy’s remarks, “In regard to George Santos, he was already removed from all of his committees,” House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said during a Wednesday press conference. “There is a legal process. The charges just came out, we just saw some of them this morning. And so, in America, there is a presumption of innocence, but they’re serious charges. He’s going to have to go through the legal process.” 

House GOP Conference chair Elise Stefanik, R.N.Y, who endorsed Santos’s congressional campaign, said there are rules for members of Congress to voluntarily resign.

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time a member of Congress from either party has been indicted,” Stefanik said. “There are a set of rules and as the majority leader stated, [Santos] voluntarily had stepped down from his committees.

Santos could face 20 years in prison for the crimes according to a statement from the federal prosecutor.

REPORT: CIA Spooks Sought Signatures for Letter Pushing Hunter Laptop as Russian Disinfo

(Headline USA) The Central Intelligence Agency may have directly “assisted in obtaining signatories” for the infamous letter dismissing reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop as “Russian disinformation,” according to House Republicans.

The House Judiciary and Intelligence committees released a report on Wednesday detailing some of the findings from their investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings. One of those findings was the federal government’s role in covering up allegations of Biden family corruption.

In the report, titled “The Hunter Biden Statement: How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters,” Republicans alleged that multiple sitting government officials “inserted themselves into the thick of the [2020] presidential campaign” by soliciting signatures for the letter, Fox News reported.

The committees have “evidence that an employee affiliated with the CIA may have assisted in obtaining signatories for the statement,” the report stated.

“One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (“PCRB”) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it,” the report added. “As he recounted, a CIA employee informed him about the statement, the CIA employee read the text of the statement to him, and the CIA employee asked [him] if he would like to join.”

Some of the former intelligence officials who signed onto the letter include  former Obama CIA Director John Brennan, former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, among others.

The letter “was a political operation to help elect” President Joe Biden, whose campaign assisted the efforts by “exploiting the national security credentials of former intelligence officials” to “discredit the allegations about Hunter Biden,” Republicans wrote.

Former CIA acting director Mike Morrell previously testified that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then working on Biden’s campaign, was the “impetus” behind the letter.

Newsom Refuses to Endorse Reparations Plan

(Headline USA) California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom refused this week to endorse a state reparations plan to provide cash payments of up to $1.2 million for black residents.

The state’s reparations task force, which was created by state legislation signed by Newsom in 2020, formally approved its final recommendations to the California legislature, which will then decide whether or not to write them into law and send them to Newsom’s desk.

Among the recommendations are hefty cash payments to black residents and a formal apology from the state legislature “for the perpetration of gross human rights violations and genocide of Africans who were enslaved and their descendants.”

California was never a slave state.

Newsom claimed reparations “is about much more than cash payments,” when asked about the task force’s recommendations.

“This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country,” Newsom said in a statement.

He added that he wants to work to reconcile the “original sin of slavery” but stopped short of endorsing specific proposals.

“Many of the recommendations put forward by the Task Force are critical action items we’ve already been hard at work addressing: breaking down barriers to vote, bolstering resources to address hate, enacting sweeping law enforcement and justice reforms to build trust and safety, strengthening economic mobility — all while investing billions to root out disparities and improve equity in housing, education, healthcare, and well beyond,” he said. 

Despite the fact that California never allowed slavery in its history, the leftist task force insisted that the state “denied African Americans their fundamental liberties and denied their humanity throughout the state’s history, from before the Civil War to the present.”

The task force went on to demand an apology for the “censure of the gravest barbarities carried out on behalf of the state by its representative officers, governing bodies, and the people,” highlighting several examples in a “non-exhaustive list.”

One of the examples on its list includes a comment from former President Ronald Reagan, who used the term “welfare queen.” This term was “racist coding to promote his philosophy preferring a limited government,” the task force claimed.

BREAKING: Key Trump Prosecutor Bows Out from Soros-Backed DA Office

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) One of the attorneys leading the prosecution case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan over the alleged falsification of business records related to hush payments is stepping down.

Executive Assistant District Attorney Peter Pope, a key member of the leadership team within the office of the embattled Soros-backed Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, is set to retire at the end of the month, a legal publication reported on Wednesday.

Pope was credited as an integral part of the prosecution team against Trump in an April 4 press release from the Manhattan DA’s office. The Wall Street Journal also flagged Pope as one of the veteran attorneys prosecuting Trump.

Bragg’s attorneys, the press release claimed, were “handling the prosecution of this case with the assistance of Peter Pope (Executive Assistant D.A.), Steven Wu (Executive Assistant D.A. and Chief of the Appeals Division), and Alan Gadlin (Deputy Chief of the Appeals Division).”

In 2007, Pope got caught in a scandal that entangled then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, a Democrat, along with his staff. A criminal investigation revealed that Spitzer’s office, in which Pope served, had improperly used state troopers for political purposes, the New York Times reported at the time.

The New York Post reported on August 13, 2007, that Pope joined efforts to block staffers from cooperating in the investigation of the Governor’s Office led by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. His potential efforts to obstruct justice forced him to hire Susan Necheles – now one of Trump’s attorneys — to represent him in the decade-old scandal, the WSJ reported last month.

Pope started his career as a prosecutor at the Manhattan Da’s Office, where he focused on violent crime and other racketeering crimes, according to information publicly available.

In January 2022, Bragg tapped Pope to be Executive Assistant DA for Gun Violence Prevention, a newly created position by the leftist DA during his month in office.

“Declaring combating gun violence his top priority, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg today announced the appointment of Peter Pope as the Manhattan District Attorney’s office first ever Executive Assistant District Attorney for Gun Violence Prevention,” Bragg announced on January 26, 2022. “Mr. Pope is an accomplished attorney with expertise in gun violence prevention and a proven record of taking on tough challenges and getting results.”

Bragg made gun control, among prosecuting Trump and overhauling crime prosecutions in Manhattan, a top priority of his leftist campaign for DA in 2021.

Ga. Gov. Kemp Plans to Be Big NeverTrump Force in 2024 Election

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp hosted a private donor event, signaling that he plans to be an anti-Trump force in the 2024 primary election cycle.

Kemp’s event featured a list of RINOs, including but not limited to: former House Speaker John Boehner and Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, NBC News reported. He also brought a slew of billionaire donors to the posh island getaway where the soirre was held.

At the event, Kemp delivered a speech in which he suggested the steps that Republicans must take in order to be successful in 2024, and it didn’t include backing former President Donald Trump.

“First, we have to tell voters what we’re for. Second, focus on the future,” he began, emphasizing the need to win above all else. “And third, we have to be able to win a general election. Because we can’t score points if we don’t have the ball.”

Kevin McLaughlin, a GOP national strategist, said that Trump’s name came up repeatedly at the retreat, noting that it was always in the context of needing to excise him from the party in order to secure a victory.

“I think everyone was focusing on candidates who can win not only primaries but general elections,” McLaughlin noted.

Though he has spent much effort bashing the former president, it is also clear that Kemp is keeping open the option of running himself in 2024. McLaughlin went so far as to suggest that Kemp ought to be strongly considered by voters.

“I think he certainly has every right to be in the conversation,” McLaughlin said. “But he wants to ensure that in Georgia there’s a bit of an equilibrium that is reset to where we think it should be.”

Kemp and his team started a Super PAC last fall, ostensibly to aid former senatorial candidate Herschel Walker in his runoff election. However, some have floated the idea that he is either preparing for a 2024 presidential campaign, or a 2026 senate campaign, after his term as Georgia governor expires.

Soros Bankrolled Groups Tied to Top Biden FTC Regulator

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) George Soros and other America-hating leftist billionaires gave millions of dollars to antitrust groups whose alumni now fill crucial roles at the Federal Trade Commission.

According to the Daily Caller, FTC Chair Lina Khan was a former legal director at Open Markets Institute, an organization that was backed by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes’ Economic Security Project.

These three billionaires gave at least $47 million combined to groups that aim to break up Big Tech companies, a goal that Khan aggressively pursued through lawsuits as FTC chair.

“Lina Khan likes to pretend that her crusade to rewrite antitrust law is a grassroots, David vs. Goliath movement,” Tom Hebert, director of competition and regulatory policy at Americans for Tax Reform, said.

“In reality, it is a well-coordinated operation funded by left-wing billionaires like George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, and Chris Hughes to push a woke social agenda.”

Hebert also pointed out that Khan used to work for the House Judiciary Committee, where she wrote bills “that massively empower the FTC.”

“Now, Khan runs the FTC, where staff widely view her as a tyrant and are fleeing in droves,” he said. “To fill the gap, Khan is tapping into the Soros/Omidyar/Hughes network of left-wing nonprofits to hire unpaid consultants that have a hand in agency policy.”

The Daily Caller reported that in March, Sarah Miller, former executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, an organization Hughes helped launch through the Economic Security Project’s investments, became a special adviser to Khan at the FTC.

According to grant databases and 990 forms, in 2021, AELP received $230,000 from the Omidyar Network, $125,500 from the Economic Security Project, and $500,000 from Open Society Foundations.

“Miller’s husband Faiz Shakir, former Bernie Sanders campaign manager, replaced Miller at AELP,” Hebert added.

In February, FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson resigned because she was concerned about Khan’s “abuses of government power,” arguing that her work has torn down “the FTC’s rich bipartisan tradition.”

“My fundamental concern with her leadership of the commission pertains to her willful disregard of congressionally imposed limits on agency jurisdiction, her defiance of legal precedent, and her abuse of power to achieve desired outcomes,” Wilson wrote in a Wall Street Journal column.

Intel Officials Who Dismissed Hunter Laptop as ‘Russian Disinfo’ Granted Dozens of WH Visits

(Headline USA) At least 11 of the intelligence officials who signed a letter dismissing reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop as “Russian disinformation” have been granted visits to the White House under President Joe Biden.

Between October 2021 and January 2023, 11 of the signatories visited the Biden White House a total of 24 times, visitor logs show, the Washington Examiner reported.

One of the signatories who frequented the White House was ex-senior CIA official Marc Polymeropoulos. He met with Marc Gustafson, special assistant to the president and senior director for the White House situation room, on May 16, 2022. Polymeropoulos’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, claimed the meeting had to do with a “traumatic brain injury” he sustained in Moscow while in the CIA, and “had absolutely nothing to do with the laptop or the statement.”

Other signatories who visited the White House include: James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence, who visited the White House on Sept. 7, 2022 for a one-on-one meeting with President Biden, according to records. Michael Hayden, a CIA director under former President George W. Bush who went on to sign the laptop letter, visited the White House on Nov. 2, 2022, with Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, the senior director for South Asia on Joe Biden’s National Security Council, records show.

At least three of the letter signatories were even granted jobs in the Biden administration. Jeremy Bash, Russell Travers and Nicholas Rasumessen were handpicked for senior Biden administration posts towards the start of Biden’s presidency.

Bash, the ex-chief of staff for both the CIA and Defense Department under the Obama administration, was appointed by Biden to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in August 2022. He regularly claimed on TV that the Hunter Biden laptop story was “Russian disinformation,” and that Hunter’s emails were “probably hacked through a Russian intelligence operation.”

“This looks like Russian intelligence. This walks like Russian intelligence. This talks like Russian intelligence,” Bash claimed on MSNBC on Oct. 19, 2020. “This effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic Russian playbook disinformation campaign.”

House Panel Squabbles over ESG Definition, Standards

(By Kim Jarrett, The Center Square) Democrats and Republicans presented different definitions of environmental, social and governance investment standards, with Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs calling it “data about value, not values” and two Republican attorneys general calling it a political agenda that hurts investment.

The House Oversight Committee held a hearing on ESG Wednesday that included Frerichs, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall.

The fight over ESG policies has occurred mainly at the state level, where legislatures have passed laws banning financial companies that use ESG standards from doing business with their state. Twenty-six attorneys general, including Reyes and Marshall, sued the Biden administration over allowing companies to prioritize ESG standards when choosing retirement plans.

Reyes called ESG an “undemocratic tax” on the economy and productivity.

“I’m here to warn you about the process involved in effectuating ESG goals,” said Reyes. “No matter how much you may agree with the policy being pushed if you deconstruct the process, it is a flawed and dangerous one and may also be illegal.”

Frerichs had a different definition of ESG, calling it “data.”

“ESG is simply additional information that investment professionals use to assess risks and return prospects,” Frerichs said. “The more data we, as investors have, the better informed our decisions are when selecting investments over the long-term.”

The two parties also disagreed over the costs of ESG. Republicans said ESG-based investments did not perform well. And ESG standards, particularly when it comes to fossil fuels, drive up consumer prices.

“If you look, particularly what’s driven inflation and what’s hit Americans in the pocketbook, including Alabamians, it’s been an increased cost of energy, part of that is attributable to decreased investment in what is currently producing the energy in our country itself,” Marshall said.

“But beyond that, particularly, for example, in agriculture, is going to be the attack on agriculture as it relates to their responsibility, according to the left, for increased carbon emissions. The question is going to be do we find farmers discriminated against in their banking relationships, do we see farmers discriminated against in other financial relationships that impact their ability to do their job?”

Democrats said state bans on ESG investing have hurt states.

A report from The Brookings Institution released last month said Texas’ ESG policies could cost the state “$300-$500 million in additional interest on the $31.8 billion borrowed during the first eight months following the implementation of the law.”

Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement after the hearing the committee’s work on ESG was not done.

“No administration should be able to gamble with Americans’ retirements to fund its own political agenda in the private market,” Comer said. “We must expose and investigate the propriety and legality of this coordinated effort.”

Border Patrol to Release Hordes of Illegals into Communities as Title 42 Ends

(By Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) Instead of U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehending, detaining and deporting people who’ve illegally entered the U.S., they will be implementing a plan decided on last year to release them en masse into local border communities.

The public health authority Title 42, which has given Border Patrol agents an additional tool to deport certain individuals, was slated to end last May. On May 20, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana enjoined the repeal of Title 42 in a case filed by 24 states, issuing a nationwide injunction.

The federal court order was the only thing that stopped CBP from enacting its policy of releasing foreign nationals en masse into local border communities. The federal injunction imposed last May halted the administration from ending Title 42.

After President Joe Biden ended the national public emergency implemented under the Trump administration to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Title 42, which can only be utilized during a public health emergency, will expire May 11.

While Fox News reported on Tuesday that CBP and Border Patrol made a decision Monday night to “authorize all Border Patrol sectors to begin ‘safe’ street releases of migrants to communities across the border *if* NGO shelters and CBP facilities do not have the capacity to hold them,” this isn’t a new plan.

It’s been a plan in place for over a year, which The Center Square first reported on last September. Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody uncovered the plan as part of discovery in a lawsuit Florida filed against the administration over its “catch and release” policy.

Rio Grande Valley Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Gloria Chavez also told local Texas law enforcement last December she was working with local municipalities to learn where foreign nationals should be released into their communities when shelters, NGOs and nonprofits assisting them were at capacity. A recording of her remarks was provided to The Center Square, which broke this story ahead of her giving testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability in February.

In a May 19, 2022, memo, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz instructed Border Patrol agents to release “processed noncitizens in the vicinity of nongovernmental organizations” and coordinate with NGOs in advance as to the specific locations where they’d be released, “paying particular attention to the availability of services and transportation options.”

“If safe locations are not available” to release illegal foreign nationals, instead of processing them for removal, Ortiz said agents would “engage with nearby cities and local governments to identify alternate safe locations for release.”

Foreign nationals were also instructed to be released into the U.S. in a “safe, humane and orderly manner,” not “late at night in an unpopulated area or in circumstances in which the individual would face a known safety risk.”

On Dec. 20, 2022, Chavez told local law enforcement that she was coordinating with local mayors and NGOs to move people into the U.S., saying the NGOs “are phenomenal.” She was learning of “particular areas they [mayors, local officials] want us to drop them off at.”

Many Texas border counties first issued declarations of disaster in early 2021 after their communities were inundated with people committing crimes and burdening local taxpayers with services they didn’t have the resources to provide – including thousands infected with COVID-19 who were released into local communities even while Title 42 was in place.

By July 5, 2022, the first county judge and later judges and commissioners of over 40 Texas counties declared an invasion, arguing Mexican cartels are bringing in drugs, terrorists and criminals through the southern border using “migrant warfare” and “nonconventional warfare” to do it.

The amount of fentanyl being seized by law enforcement in single vehicles over 100 miles from the border in Texas, Arizona and California is enough to kill entire populations of small cities and towns. The amount of fentanyl Texas Operation Lone Star officers have seized since March 2021 is enough to kill everyone in the United States.

More counties are likely to issue disaster and invasion declarations as the Biden administration continues to facilitate “legal pathways” for people from all over the world to illegally enter the United States. An estimated 13,000 are expected to arrive a day when Title 42 ends, officials have estimated, or roughly 4.6 million within a year.