Bombshell Report Reveals Team Trump Is Rewarding Key Trial Witnesses

Donald Trump’s campaign and the Trump Organization paid off nine witnesses called to testify in criminal cases against Trump, an explosive new report from ProPublica reveals. Witnesses who testified in defense of Trump for his numerous criminal cases received massive raises, new jobs, cushy severance packages, and more, all conveniently coinciding with being called to testify or after providing testimony favorable to Trump—and the excuses from Team Trump couldn’t be weaker.

Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told ProPublica witness tampering is often difficult to prove because the gimmick is often not done explicitly. But the trend could assist prosecutors in their efforts to call into question the credibility of witnesses testifying in Trump’s defense for his innumerable legal battles.

In response to queries by ProPublica, team Trump claimed the nine witnesses who all saw big raises and flashy new jobs simply took on more work. The campaign also insisted Trump, who notoriously insists on controlling every facet of his organizations, has no say in who gets promoted or how much they’re paid. “The president is not involved in the decision-making process,” a Trump campaign official told ProPublica. “I would argue Trump doesn’t know what we’re paid.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, questionably asserted in a statement to ProPublica that “the 2024 Trump campaign is the most well-run and professional operation in political history.” Cheung continued, “Any false assertion that we’re engaging in any type of behavior that may be regarded as tampering is absurd and completely fake.” ProPublica also reports the outlet received a cease-and-desist from David Warrington, Trump’s attorney, against publishing its findings, promising that “President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.” According to ProPublica’s findings, those legal remedies seem to conveniently trend toward doling out big payments to people called to testify on Trump’s behalf.

According to records reviewed by ProPublica, monthly payments from Trump’s campaign to Trump lawyer Boris Epshteyn’s company—which appears to be just a one-man show—more than doubled after Trump was indicted—jumping from $26,000 a month to $53,500 a month. The Trump campaign told ProPublica the increase was due to Epshteyn’s workload increasing, even though Epshteyn has continued taking contracts for other campaigns and landed a job as a managing director at a financial securities firm elsewhere.

Susie Wiles, senior adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign who allegedly witnessed Trump showing off classified documents, also saw a big bump in pay after being called to a grand jury and before Trump’s indictment in that case. Her pay jumped from $25,000 a month to $30,000 a month and her consulting firm received a hefty $75,000, according to ProPublica. Team Trump claims payments to the consulting firm were simply backpay and her raise was because she “redid her contract.” Her daughter Caroline was hired by the Trump campaign a few months later, receiving a salary of $222,000 and becoming the fourth-highest-paid campaign staffer. Caroline told ProPublica she got the job “because I earned it,” telling ProPublica, “I don’t think it has anything to do with Susie,” referring to her mother. Meanwhile, her mother stated she directly hired her nepobaby daughter and that Trump had no influence in that decision.

Dan Scavino, a political adviser and Trump’s former chief of staff, was given a seat on Truth Social’s board, Trump’s social media company. His appointment landed between him being subpoenaed and giving testimony to Congress about Trump’s role in the January 6 Capitol riot. Scavino also received a $600,000 retention bonus and “a $4 million ‘executive promissory note’ paid in shares” at some point, according to ProPublica. Conveniently, Scavino’s testimony around the Capitol riot produced no “significant new information,” according to ProPublica.

Allen Weisselberg, a retired Trump Organization chief financial officer who was recently convicted of lying for Trump, received a $2 million severance agreement four months after New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump for real estate fraud. The agreement included a clause preventing Weisselberg from cooperating with investigators unless forced to do so. According to court records, prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money trial raised the agreement for why they wouldn’t call him to testify, noting, “The agreement seems to preclude us from talking to him or him talking to us at the risk of losing $750,000 of outstanding severance pay.”

Witness payoffs are nothing new for team Trump, which has a history of campaign staff getting convicted for federal witness tampering: Roger Stone, Trump’s 2016 campaign adviser, directed a witness to lie to a Senate committee. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was convicted for colluding with Russia after previously being convicted for witness tampering. Trump pardoned both, as well as Jared Kushner’s father, in his final days in office.

On Sunday, an interview with Donald Trump aired on Fox News, and online commentators saw clear issues on the broadcast that suggest some heavy edits.

On X (formerly Twitter), commentators quickly pointed out sloppy cuts and disjointed parts of the interview.

The Twitter account “Bad Fox Graphics” pointed out heavy edits and the poor audio recording in the interview.

The edits don’t even address the wild things Trump actually said in the interview. He proposed cutting several government agencies, and reiterated his plan for mass deportations if reelected president. He denied ever saying, “Lock her up,” regarding Hillary Clinton in 2016, claiming that “the people would all say, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’” and he would try to shut it down—a claim immediately corrected by X’s “community notes” as well as fact checkers from different news outlets. He also said that he would be “OK” with going to jail, but he was “not sure the public would stand for it”.

“I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know at a certain point there’s a breaking point,” Trump added, seemingly alluding to violence from his supporters.

So, what was the reason for Fox chopping up arguably the biggest interview they could possibly get? Inexperienced staff resulting in poor production? Faulty equipment? Perhaps Trump said something so horrible that even Fox News can’t explain it away.

Or there’s a simpler reason: Trump can’t answer questions or speak coherently anymore.

Roughly 100 Columbia University students and alumni launched a “Revolt for Rafah” encampment on Friday night. Student protesters say their protest is a direct response to the Rafah massacre and a recent Washington Post article exposing a group of wealthy elites who used their power to influence New York City Mayor Eric Adams into using the police to quash student protests at Columbia University in April.

Dubbed “Revolt for Rafah: Installation 1,” the encampment was launched on Alumni Reunion Weekend at Columbia University. To date, alumni have stated intent to withhold an estimated $67 million in donations to the university unless it drops disciplinary charges against student activists. On Friday, The Intercept reported Columbia University had quietly changed its disciplinary rules as disciplinary hearings were set to begin.

In April, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of several pro-Palestine groups at Columbia University, launched the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment in the nation. After that encampment was swept by the NYPD and more than 100 students were arrested, students at Columbia University launched a second encampment. Students at more than 130 campuses across the United States followed suit, launching their own Gaza Solidarity Encampments, according to data compiled by Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium—with more globally.

Student encampments have called on their universities to disclose their financial portfolio and revenue sources and to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies directly tied to Israel. Friday’s “Revolt for Rafah” encampment describes itself as “more rage,” according to an organizer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“Revolt for Rafah: Installation One will persist throughout Columbia’s alumni programming,” CUAD said in a statement. “Disruptions and demonstrations like these will continue throughout the summer and beyond until Columbia ceases to align with occupation and genocide. We refuse to have our tuition dollars fund the wholesale destruction of Gaza. We will not rest until divestment.”

“We are outraged by Columbia’s complicity in the killing of our people in Gaza, and most recently the massacre in Rafah,” a statement inviting people to join the “pop-up encampment-style installation” provided to The New Republic reads. “We are equally outraged by Columbia’s use of brute force and their capitulation to the Billionaire’s lobby instead of to the ‘safety of the students.’ We will resist, until Columbia divests.”

Republican Representative Jim Jordan is reacting to Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges by inviting the prosecutors to answer questions on Capitol Hill.

In two letters posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, invited Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, as well as senior counsel Matthew Colangelo, to speak before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on June 13.

The move is not a subpoena, and thus carries no legal weight or compulsion for Bragg or Colangelo to attend. So then why issue the letters? Jordan probably is hoping for the off-chance that Bragg and Colangelo do show up so that he and his fellow Republicans can grandstand with Trump watching. Or, in the likely event the pair don’t appear, he can claim they are hiding because Trump’s prosecution was clearly politicized. Either way, the move itself is blatantly for political and not legal purposes, which isn’t surprising from Jordan, who went to law school and then never even took the bar exam.

The Ohio congressman tried and failed to push impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, only to have star witness Alexander Smirnov be indicted for lying to the FBI and working for Russian intelligence. Jordan still insisted that impeachment was worth pursuing after that, despite not being able to spin the Smirnov news. Fellow Republican Ken Buck called out Jordan for knowing that Smirnov wasn’t a credible witness before his indictment, but Jordan was undeterred, scrambling for new evidence to use against Biden. That led to a rebuke from the Justice Department over what Jordan claims Democrats are doing now: causing politicized conflict.

If Jordan expects anything from Trump in return for this symbolic effort, it’s not likely to be cash, as Trump doesn’t want to give up any of the fundraising money he’s made since his conviction. (Trump has lost a lot of money since Thursday evening too.) Maybe Jordan’s after a cushy Cabinet post.

Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, may soon be barred from practicing law for anyone.

The ex–New York City mayor is facing disbarment after the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility recommended that he lose his law license over his involvement in lawsuits alleging election fraud in 2020.

“We conclude that disbarment is the only sanction that will protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession, and deter other lawyers from launching similarly baseless claims in the pursuit of such wide-ranging yet completely unjustified relief,” the board’s recommendation reads.

In the rest of its 62-page decision, the board highlighted Giuliani’s weaponization of his law license and criticized his efforts to overthrow the election results in Pennsylvania in particular. The decision follows Giuliani’s law license being suspended nearly three years ago over his support of Trump’s efforts to claim that he didn’t really lose in 2020. Now the final decision to disbar Giuliani permanently goes to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Giuliani will likely soon join a list of other prominent Trump 2020 lawyers who have been disbarred, including Jenna Ellis. John Eastman may soon join them, as well.

It hasn’t been a good year for Giuliani, although he’s in deep denial about it, not including his thoughts on the 2020 election. He filed for bankruptcy last year but is still spending lavishly and ignoring his many creditors. He’s desperately trying to make money, even resorting to selling his own brand of coffee. He can’t find a new accountant after his old one dropped him, and one of his ex-cronies, Lev Parnas, spilled the beans on how Giuliani tried to manufacture a Biden-Ukraine scandal, something that Giuliani still hasn’t given up on.

On top of that, Giuliani has to deal with more fallout from his 2020 election efforts. After being indicted in Arizona for his election machinations there, he doubled down on his allegations of fraud and had a pitiful defense for his actions: highlighting all of the states where he challenged election results. He even taunted the Arizona attorney general in trying to dodge a subpoena, only to be served near his Florida residence anyway. And Trump still hasn’t paid him for all of that legal work, either.

It’s easy to see why Giuliani should be disbarred, as he doesn’t seem to know when to stop, no matter how much trouble he’s in. But hey, it’s something that he has in common with his most famous client.

The Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the state’s abortion laws Friday, overturning a lower court’s decision that would have allowed women within Texas to actually access abortions granted within the confines of the state’s ban.

The case, Zurawski v. Texas, began with five women and eventually grew to represent 20 women and two doctors. It became the strongest challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s myriad abortion restrictions implemented since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the suit last year, argued that while the state’s laws technically left room for abortions in urgent circumstances, they were also so vague that they practically restricted all medical practitioners from actually considering the procedure as an option. Specifically, people could undergo abortions during complicated pregnancies so long as their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was medically necessary.

But opponents to the laws have argued that “good faith” is too subjective for language determining medical access—and could potentially open doctors up to lawsuits brought by anyone who didn’t believe the procedure was required. The court, however, did not see that complication.

“A physician who tells a patient, ‘Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,’ and in the same breath states ‘but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances’ is simply wrong in that legal assessment,” wrote Justice Jane Bland in the court’s opinion.

The ruling effectively leaves people in need of abortions within the state just two options: either leave, or risk death.

“Sadly, what we know is that there are anti-abortion advocates who will always question [a doctor’s] decision,” Molly Duane, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told The Texas Tribune. “I don’t know how all of this will actually function in practice … the fact that true exceptions do not exist in practice will continue to be the norm.”

The brief opinion made no mention of the 20-plus women who were represented by the lawsuit and who individually suffered under Texas’s nearly airtight abortion restrictions. Lauren Miller, a Dallas mother who was forced out of state after learning that one of her twin fetuses had a complication that threatened her health as well as the health of her other child, told the Tribune that the decision felt like a “gut punch.”

“I read the ruling. I felt like I had missed something. And so I immediately reread it, and I realized what was missing in those pages was us. We weren’t there. We didn’t exist,” Miller told the publication.

One member of the court, Justice Brett Busby, left enough wiggle room in his concurring opinion for a broader challenge to the law. But legal challenges are time-consuming, and in the meantime, more patients could be forced to wait until their symptoms are life-threatening before doctors can offer them abortions.

Texas has recently turned up the heat on its anti-abortion policies, forcing the issue into the center of the Lone Star State’s politics. Over the weekend, a policy agenda proposed by the GOP convention in San Antonio included calls for legislation that would transform the fetal personhood ideology into law, a move that would effectively categorize any person receiving an abortion at any stage as a murderer.

House Speaker and fascist elf Mike Johnson called in to Fox and Friends on Friday to express his desire for the Supreme Court to “step in” and overturn the criminal convictions handed down by a Manhattan jury against Trump on Thursday.

During the segment, which Johnson published to his official YouTube channel, Johnson intimated that he’s spoken with Supreme Court justices who are “deeply concerned” about the criminal justice system functioning properly for once. “I think that the justices on the court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight.”

Johnson, either from wishful thinking or showing his hand, shifted from what he thinks and hopes the Supreme Court will do to essentially speaking on behalf of the court’s conservative bloc, promising viewers, “This will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it; it’s just going to take some time to do it.”

Trump has plans to appeal his conviction, after issuing a variety of false statements about the trial over its duration. Per New York penal law, he has 30 days to submit the appeal—which would come just weeks before his July 11 sentencing hearing. That appeal would begin at the New York Court of Appeals. If that state-level court denies his appeal, Trump can petition to ask the Supreme Court to review the case. Considering the conservative majority on the court, with its three justices directly appointed by Trump, they’ll likely hear the case and potentially overturn the conviction. How long that process takes can range from months to years.

At a press conference Friday, Donald Trump ranted and raved about his displeasure at being found guilty of 34 felony charges in his hush-money trial.

Standing in front of a line of flags at Trump Tower in New York, Trump took aim at Michael Cohen, Judge Juan Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Democrats, and just about anyone who he thinks wronged him, violating his gag order in the process. But his biggest target might have been the English language.

At times, his words were hard to follow, as the first convicted felon former president went off on tangents with sentences with no clear end.

In one bizarre sentence, he demonstrated a profound misunderstanding of the word “literally” by claiming witnesses “for our side” were “literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil,” referring to Merchan.

This could very well be another sign of cognitive decline from the Republican presidential nominee, exacerbated by possibly the worst news he’s ever received. Last week, at a Bronx rally, he bragged about being able to put on his pants, and two weeks ago, he seemed to freeze while speaking at the NRA’s annual convention. His rant on Friday included an attack on immigrants who speak incomprehensible languages, a nod to similar bizarre remarks he made at the southern U.S. border in February.

If Trump hadn’t also explained why he didn’t testify at this trial, anyone watching his remarks would have realized why themselves.

Donald Trump claims he wanted to testify in his hush-money trial—but he was afraid he’d be found guilty of more crimes. Trump’s statements came during a meandering, often incoherent tirade in front of the press at Trump Tower on Friday, the day after he was convicted of 34 felonies by a Manhattan jury.

“I would have testified. I wanted to testify,” he said one day after his first criminal trial came to a close.

“The judge allowed them to go into everything I was ever involved in–not this case–everything I was ever involved in, which is a first. In other words, you could go into every single thing that I ever did [and ask], ‘Was he a bad boy here? Was he a bad boy there?’” he continued, seeming to imply that if the prosecution really dug into his past they would have found more crimes.

“But you would have been, you would have said something out of whack, like, ‘It was a beautiful sunny day,’ and it was actually raining out,” Trump continued, providing a false example of perjury, before seemingly word-associating to talk about the pro-Trump gathering outside Manhattan Criminal Court.

Trump opened his presser with claims that witnesses for Trump’s defense were “literally crucified” by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who Trump described as looking “so nice and soft” and that he “looks like an angel, but he’s really a devil” before moving on to his boilerplate racist rant about migrants.

During the trial, Trump falsely claimed he was prohibited from testifying as a result of a gag order restricting his public statements after he incited harassment against judge Juan Merchan and Merchan’s daughter. Trump allies opposed him testifying, voicing concerns about his tendency to ramble.

The day after Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, he rushed to Trump Tower to hold a press conference proclaiming his innocence. But in doing so, he also immediately violated his gag order.

In a 30-minute speech on Friday, Trump slammed his former fixer Michael Cohen as slimy and untrustworthy.

“Again, if I wrote down and paid a lawyer—and by the way, this was a highly qualified lawyer. Now, I’m not allowed to use his name because of the gag order,” Trump said. “But, you know, he’s a sleazebag.”

“Everybody knows that,” he continued. “Took me a while to find out, but he was effective. He did work.”

Trump’s gag order—which has not yet been lifted—bars him from publicly attacking the court staff, witnesses, or jurors involved in the case. And he’s already been hit with repercussions for previous transgressions. Earlier this month, Judge Juan Merchan ruled that Trump would have to pay $10,000—the maximum penalty of $1,000 per violation—for continually breaking the order.

But that ruling came with an added threat that is still on the table. Since the court could not craft an “appropriate” financial penalty for a deep-pocketed defendant like Trump, Merchan wrote that, in order to “protect the dignity of the judicial system and to compel respect for its mandates,” the court “must therefore consider whether in some instances, jail may be a necessary punishment.”

Trump is due to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention. And his words could come back to haunt him in that hearing: In criminal cases, judges often consider a defendant’s level of remorse (or lack thereof) when deciding a sentence.

Meanwhile, Cohen responded Friday in real time, posting on X that “Trump’s press conference was nothing shy of a batshit crazy avalanche of broken brain word manure,” while tagging his nickname for his former boss: “#VonShitzInPantz.”