Trump Allies Hit With Ethics Complaint for Pushing Election Conspiracy

The former chair of the Fulton County Board of Elections filed an ethics complaint Friday against three of the Georgia State Election Board’s members, accusing them of breaking the law in their efforts to help Donald Trump disrupt the presidential election. 

In the complaint addressed to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, former Chair Cathy Woolard alleged that board members Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston, and Janelle King had violated the ethics code by failing to follow state law and violating the public’s trust. Through their efforts to  make significant changes to the rules governing Georgia’s elections, they had “at minimum created the appearance that their actions are intended to further their own political preferences,” Woodlard wrote.

Woolard described an instance on July 12, when Jeffares, Johnston, and King had hurriedly organized a private meeting, away from the public and the two other board members, to pass two election rules pitched by Georgia Republican Party Chair Jeff Koons.The first rule required county election boards to post daily ballot counts online, and the second increased the number of partisan monitors during the vote-counting process. Woolard argued that their quorum-lacking rendezvous that day had violated the Open Meetings Act, which requires meetings to be open to the public and for all board members to be given due notice. 

Woolard noted that the same day, Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally and staunch election denier, posted on X saying, “There are now 3 great members of the GA State Election Board—support them. They are fighting hard for us!!! The Dems + Kemp + Raffensperger + Carr are fighting our great SEB Members. Fight back!” 

Last week, the Georgia State Election board voted 3-2 in favor of a new rule, which required a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results, making it significantly easier for county election officials to delay or refuse certification of election results in November. 

“This type of regulation is unprecedented nationally, but it is consistent with a broader strategy among Trump allies to lay the groundwork for refusing to certify presidential election results if he loses in November,” wrote Woolard. 

The next day, Johnston moved to reopen a complaint into the administration of the 2020 election in Fulton County, which Woolard said had been closed in May, before Johnston had been appointed to the board. The state attorney general had advised them not to reopen the fully adjudicated case, but Johnston allegedly indicated she had received outside counsel on the legality of reopening the case. 

That day, Trump reposted a video of the board meeting on Truth Social and called for the attorney general to take action on the reopened complaint into Fulton County. Trump wrote, “We can’t let this happen again. WE MUST WIN GEORGIA IN 2024!!!”

Woolard noted that Trump named the three members specifically during his rally in Atlanta, Georgia, earlier this month. While speaking to the audience of thousands, Trump called the trio “pitbulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory.”

“The members have done nothing to dispel that appearance of impropriety, instead receiving a standing ovation at a Trump rally and openly discussing a position in the Trump administration,” Woolard wrote. “Taken together, these actions pose a serious risk of creating confusion about the rules governing the rapidly approaching election and undermining voter confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”

Woolard also alleged that Jeffares had stated that he was angling for a position in a potential Trump administration. Jeffares told The Guardian that, when speaking to a former Trump campaign adviser, he’d said, “[I]f y’all can’t figure out who you want to be the EPA director for the south-east, I’d like to have it.”

Woolard served as the election board chair from September 2021 to June 2023. When her replacement, Patrise Perkins-Hooker, resigned in April, Woolard stepped in as interim chair to assist with the Georgia primary elections. While some were hopeful she would hold the position until after the general election, Woolard submitted her own resignation on July 3, writing that “it is time for someone who can serve through the fall elections take the reins.”

Government ethics watchdog American Oversight filed a lawsuit against the board in July, similarly accusing the trio of violating Georgia’s Open Meetings Act. Since 2020, Georgia has had the highest number of certification refusals anywhere in the country—and remains the likely epicenter for Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2024. A report from American Doom found that Georgia had at least twenty-two people who’d pushed election denying conspiracy theorists employed as election officials—including two on its board of elections. 

Donald Trump announced Friday his transition team that will assist with staffing decisions and policy setup should he return to the White House—and two of his sons are on it.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. will be honorary chairs along with the vice presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance. The team’s other members are Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive and the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s presidency; and Howard Lutnik, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services firm.

Both McMahon and Lutnick are major donors to the Trump campaign, with Lutnik recently hosting a New York fundraiser that raised $15 million for the convicted felon.

“The 2024 GOP Platform to Make America Great Again is a forward-looking agenda that will deliver safety, prosperity and freedom for the American people,” Trump said in a statement. “My administration will deliver on these bold promises.”

Trump Jr. has said he wants to be able to “veto” appointment candidates in Trump’s second administration should he be elected, wishing to ensure that his father has true believers.

“I don’t want to pick a single person for a position of power. All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster,” he told Axios in July. “I want to block the liars. I want to block the guys that are, you know, pretending they’re with you.”

Trump Jr.’s presence on the team is a sign of his growing influence with his father. While Trump primarily relied on his daughter Ivanka during his White House term, she has not been involved this time around. Trump Jr. was reportedly one of the driving forces behind Trump picking Vance as his running mate.

While naming a transition team before an election is normal for presidential campaigns, it’s taking place months later than in 2016, when Trump’s transition team was named by June. This could be due to reported bad blood between some Trump campaign staffers and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 team over coveted White House staff positions if Trump wins in November. Trump has tried to distance himself from the conservative manifesto, only for more links to emerge each day.

Another reason it has taken so long could be that Trump’s campaign staff was just shaken up with the hiring of 2016 Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His hiring may have prompted the transition team to finally be selected.

Some Trump staffers are reportedly wondering if Trump wants Lewandowski to push out senior campaign officials such as co-chairs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. Maybe the former president envisions his staff fighting each other to prove themselves to him and get prized White House jobs.

In preparation for his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump has sought out the help of right-wing convert Tulsi Gabbard, who was able to best Harris during a 2019 presidential debate. 

Trump’s method of preparing for a debate by only talking to people who agree with him has apparently continued, as he has added the former U.S. representative from Hawaii to his roster of friends for so-called “policy talks” in advance of his upcoming debate next month, according to The New York Times. Others he’s enlisted to help with debate prep in the past include MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz and his running mate J.D. Vance. 

Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed Gabbard’s involvement in an email to the Times. 

Since her failed presidential run in 2020, Gabbard has left the Democratic Party and become something of a conservative celebrity, elevating transphobia, spreading Russian propaganda, and unsuccessfully endorsing Republicans. 

But Trump may have tapped her for a very specific reason: she may know how to beat Harris in a debate. During the July 2019 presidential debate on CNN, Gabbard went out of her way to go after Harris’s prosecutorial record, issuing a devastating blow to the then-senator’s presidential run. 

Harris “put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations, and then laughed about it, when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said at the time. “She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row, until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep cash bail system in place—that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.”

Harris responded saying that she was proud of her record, and “proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches, or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor, but actually doing the work.” Harris also said she’d hoped to legalize marijuana. 

Gabbard insisted that Harris had blocked evidence in a death row case. Gabbard was referring to the case of Kevin Cooper, a man who maintained his innocence on death row for 39 years before he was released. In 2016, while Harris was running for Senate, Cooper’s attorneys asked for new DNA testing, which they were confident would exonerate him. Harris’s office refused to allow the testing, and later said that she had not been involved in the decision.  

Onstage, Gabbard said that Harris owed an apology to those who suffered under her “reign” as California’s attorney general. Harris appeared incredulous over Gabbard’s line of attack, and said she had always opposed the death penalty. 

“My entire career, I have been opposed, personally opposed, to the death penalty, and that has never changed,” Harris said. “And I dare anybody who is in a position to make that decision to face the people I have faced and to say, ‘I will not seek the death penalty.’” 

Harris has already gotten some heat from conservatives for her opposition to the death penalty, specifically over her decision in 2019 not to recommend the death penalty for a man who killed a police officer, despite a pressure campaign from several California Democrats and the officer’s widow. As a freshly elected district attorney, Harris kept to her campaign promise that she would not seek the death penalty. 

While Trump’s team has made it clear he’s interested in going after her record as a district attorney and attorney general, it’s unlikely that Trump will reopen the death penalty issue with Harris the same way Gabbard did—especially considering the fact that Trump supports the death penalty, specifically for drug dealers. 

Meanwhile, Project 2025, which outlines the beginning of the Trump presidency, urges the next administration to “do everything possible to obtain finality” for every prisoner on federal death row, which currently includes 40 people—executing them en masse. 

Trump may hope that Gabbard can give him the edge to go face-to-face with Harris, something he has spent the better part of a month trying desperately to avoid. Amid the scheduling chaos and uncertainty, Trump’s team insisted Thursday that the former president had agreed to a whopping three debates, something no one asked for. Meanwhile, Harris’s team has agreed to the first on September 10 hosted by ABC, and if Trump appears, they will go from there. 

J.D. Vance is doubling down on his remarks on immigrants from a podcast in 2021. 

In a press conference on Friday, Vance defended his remarks in response to a question from The New York Times’ Chris Cameron, who asked the Republican vice presidential candidate about his comments on Jack Murphy Live about the problems from European immigration in early American history, and whether he would have recommended mass deportation back then. 

“Has anybody seen the movie Gangs of New York?” Vance asked the room filled with reporters, citing a 2002 film depicting the city in 1863. “That’s what I’m talking about. You know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves in our country, it can lead to higher crime rates.”

Citing a fictional movie is probably not the best way to defend controversial comments, especially since the major villain of the movie is an anti-immigrant nativist crime boss based on a real person, which people on X were happy to point out.  

Xenophobic undertones aside, Vance’s point loses more credibility in the face of the fact that immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, “ethnic enclaves” or not. And while Vance later segued into stating that immigration policy needs to encourage more assimilation, he also skirted around mentioning Donald Trump’s plan for mass deportations. It seems clear that Vance’s words on immigration will probably help the Harris campaign further paint him as weird.

J.D. Vance made some cringe-worthy mistakes and a Freudian slip at his comments in Milwaukee on Friday. 

Speaking to the Milwaukee Police Association, Vance took a question from a reporter who asked about a recent ABC/IPSOS poll showing voters view Minnesota Governor Tim Walz more favorably than Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick. The Ohio senator’s troubles began when he started out by appearing to misgender the reporter. 

“What’s your response to that poll, and what can you do ahead of the October debate to try to win over more Americans?” asked the journalist.  

Instead of answering the question, Vance tried to deflect by associating Walz with the Black Lives Matter Protests of 2020—but fell right on his face. 

“This is a guy who actively encouraged rioters to burn down Minneapolis during the summer of 2020, it’s the biggest city in his country,” said Vance. “His running mate, Kamala Harris, was offering to burn—to bail those rioters out of prison.” 

During the protests, Harris did tweet out a link to Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit organization that operates a bail fund. But claiming that she was personally involved is dubious. 

Vance also clearly needs a geography lesson, as he then went on to say that Walz “let rioters burn down the largest city in Minneapolis.” 

In the same breath, Vance misspoke yet again. “I think when people know the truth about Harris and Walz, their anti-crime record …” Vance said before pausing, looking frustrated at his mistakes. 

Referring to the Democrats’ record as “anti-crime” is something that Harris and Walz wouldn’t dispute. Considering the vice president’s background as a prosecutor and the Minneapolis Minnesota governor’s experience cracking down on gun-related crime, they probably wouldn’t mind the framing. 

It seems like Vance is trying to give Trump a run for his money for most flubs in one minute. 

Is Donald Trump really trying to get out of debating Kamala Harris again? Or is it the opposite?

On Thursday, it seemed like the dust had finally settled. “The debate about debates is over,” said Michael Tyler, the Harris campaign communications director, in a statement. “Donald Trump’s campaign accepted our proposal for three debates—two presidential and a vice presidential debate.”

“Assuming Donald Trump actually shows up on September 10 to debate Vice President Harris, then Governor Walz will see JD Vance on October 1 and the American people will have another opportunity to see the vice president and Donald Trump on the debate stage in October,” the Harris campaign continued.

But now, Trump’s team claims that the Democrat lied when she said the two sides reached a debate agreement. At the moment, there is only one confirmed debate between the presidential nominees, to be held September 10 by ABC News.

Nevertheless, the Trump campaign’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Caller Friday that Trump will be doing three debates and Vance will be doing two.

“Let’s be clear: President Trump will be on the debate stage THREE times with Fox News, ABC, and NBC/Telemundo. Likewise, Senator Vance will show up to debate Tim Walz on TWO occasions, on September 18 with CNN and October 1 with CBS. If Harris and Walz don’t show up, an empty podium can stand in their place, proving to the American people just how weak they are,” Leavitt told the Caller.

Trump had waffled for months on whether he would debate Harris, finally announcing he wanted to debate her three times on ABC, CBS, and Fox News. Harris accepted the invitations for the ABC and CBS debates but not for the one hosted by the Trump-adoring Fox.

Vance, confusingly, proposed two vice presidential debates as opposed to the traditional one. One of his proposed dates is the same day Trump is due to be sentenced for his hush-money trial.

The Trump campaign went to paint the Democratic strategy as such: “They are trying to get away with seeing how she performs on the September debate, and then maybe they’ll commit to an October debate,” Leavitt said.

Trump may also make an escape plan for the September debate by highlighting Harris’s personal connection to ABC executive Dana Walden.

It seems like both sides are trying to paint the other as scared to debate, which may end up resulting in more and more appearances—or perhaps in none at all.

The fake electors who worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election results still have their hands in American politics.

The fake electors have since donated en masse to Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, along with scores of other Republicans, according to campaign finance records obtained by The Guardian.

Meshawn Maddock, one of the 16 fake electors criminally charged in Michigan and former co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, has donated more than $1,800 to Trump this campaign cycle. Tyler Bowyer, a charged fake elector in Arizona, has donated $645 to the Republican nominee. A fake elector in Georgia who has not been criminally charged, David Hanna, has given at least $25,000 to Trump this year alone.

“It is incredibly rare for politicians to accept campaign contributions from people under indictment,” Michael Beckel, the research director at election watchdog group Issue One, told The Guardian. “It’s generally not good optics for politicians to accept money from people accused of serious wrongdoing. Political candidates generally don’t want to be tied to convicted or accused felons. Yet in certain circles, association with the people who served as fake electors for Donald Trump in 2020 may be a badge of honor.”

Republicans running in U.S. House races have also benefited from their affiliation to Trump and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, raking in campaign contributions from the fake electors on their home turf. In 2023, Arizona Representative Eli Crane received $2,900 from Jim Lamon, one of the 18 criminally charged co-defendants in that state, and Representative Yvette Herrell has received more than $3,000 and $2,900 from a pair of fake electors in New Mexico.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has just turned into a thunderdome, as his newest hire seems to spell trouble for his current staff, according to a report from Puck News published Thursday.

Corey Lewandowski, who served as one of Trump’s campaign managers in 2016, was brought aboard the Trump team earlier this week, carrying with him a history of alleged misconduct and his “Let Trump Be Trump” attitude. Lewandowski will serve as a senior adviser, reportedly above campaign co-managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles.

The decision to formally bring Lewandowski back into the fold, after he served as an informal adviser, came straight from Trump, according to Puck’s senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri. The move has launched speculation that Trump intends for Lewandowski’s return to result in the removal of LaCivita and Wiles.

“Susie is a survivor; she’s not going anywhere. But then you have LaCivita and Corey Lewandowski, two alpha men,” a source close to Lewandowski told Palameri. “It’s like Trump just wants them to kill each other and for one to win so he doesn’t have to actually fire anyone.”

As Trump’s team has struggled to maintain an effective line of attack against its new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, the campaign has been forced to defend LaCivita and Wiles for their floundering efforts.

There is also one big reason to believe LaCivita is more vulnerable than his counterpart: his exorbitant fee. Advanced Strategies, LaCivita’s firm, has been collecting $50,000 from the Republican National Committee each month, contributing to the whopping $1.7 million he’s already invoiced in just 2024—quickly surpassing the $1.65 million he billed the year before, according to Puck.

Trump is clearly trying to recreate the behind-the-scenes magic that got him elected in the first place. But unfortunately for his staff, that involved major late-campaign turnover. The former president fired Lewandowski from his campaign in June 2016 and promoted Paul Manafort.

For his part, Lewandowski seemed to deny rumors he would take LaCivita to task over his mounting bills. “I have never told anyone I will be conducting a forensic audit of the campaign, nor have I alluded to, or have any understanding of, how much money Chris LaCivita may or may not have billed this campaign,” Lewandowski told Palameri, adding that rumors he was there to push anyone out were “fake news.”

Lewandowski’s arrival comes with a slate of other aides from old Trump campaigns, and more are sure to follow. “There are things and people that swirl around Lewandowski, and if you bring him back on, they’re coming with him,” the source close to Lewandowski told Palameri. “He’s a mini tornado. He stirs things up and brings things into the orbit.”

Lewandowski’s hiring signals Trump’s desire to be surrounded by those who agree with him and won’t try to change him—while many of the former president’s own allies have begun urging him to do the exact opposite of his favored strategy of personal attacks.

Project 2025, the conservative manifesto put together by the Heritage Foundation, is starting to worry Republicans, including Donald Trump, who see it as a political liability.

These Republicans are trying desperately to figure out how to handle the negative attention from the project, which Democrats have seized on in effective attacks against Trump and the GOP.

“There came a point at which people realized, ‘Oh, you might have actually done something that jeopardizes Heritage’s influence in the next administration,” one source close to the conservative organization told NOTUS.

When Democrats started to attack Project 2025, Heritage staff saw it as “fun” initially, but that was short-lived after Trump, fed up with the negative association with his presidential campaign, disavowed the project.

“People are legitimately worried,” the source said.

The foundation tried to downplay the plan, only to find that it didn’t help in the face of Democratic attacks, which have continued unabated. One Democratic group has even started to specifically target certain House Republicans by tying them to the manifesto.

The fallout of Trump’s frustration with being tied to the project led to the resignation of Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, who some conservatives see as taking the fall for Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts. Roberts marketed the plan much more heavily than the foundation normally would for its projects.

As more and more revelations come out about the project, Democrats have more avenues to attack it, especially as Roberts continues to defend it and even brag about his associations with Trump. A photo revealed that the two even took a private flight together in 2022. And Trump’s vehement denial of having anything to do with the manifesto has drawn the ire of some of his biggest supporters. No matter what they do, conservatives are stuck.

Donald Trump has angered veterans by claiming that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor.

The Republican presidential nominee, who famously avoided the Vietnam War draft with a timely diagnosis of bone spurs, denigrated the value of the Medal of Honor at a campaign event in New Jersey Thursday night by claiming that the award’s civilian variant is “much better.” According to Trump, that’s because the military medal’s recipients, who receive the honor for valor in combat, are usually “in very bad shape” since they’ve been “hit so many times” by bullets.

“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version,” Trump said, mistakenly referring to the honor bestowed for valor in combat. “But civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets, or they’re dead.”

Trump mentioned the award after he was introduced by one of his top patrons, Miriam Adelson, a heavy-handed Republican donor who became the richest Israeli in the world after her husband, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, died in 2021. The couple earned Trump’s favor after they funneled $25 million to Trump’s super PACs in 2016 and donated $5 million to his inauguration. That earned them a spot on the dais, just a few rows behind Jared Kushner, as Trump was sworn in. In 2018, their contributions effectively bought Mrs. Adelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and in 2019 influenced Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty in Golan Heights, an Israeli-occupied portion of southwest Syria that the religious state captured in 1967.

Four years later, the Adelsons eclipsed their previous spending on the pro-Israel politico with a $90 million donation, and gave $300 million to Republican-focused Senate and congressional Leadership Funds, outspending the next three donors combined, according to Intelligencer.

“She gets it, and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she got it for—and that’s through committees and everything else,” Trump said, referring to Adelson. “I watched Sheldon sitting so proud in the White House when we gave Miriam the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

The comments rubbed veterans the wrong way, who connected Trump’s disrespectful rhetoric to a 2020 Atlantic report that caught the former president repeatedly referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.”

Veterans for Responsible Leadership, a bipartisan super PAC, highlighted the clip from Thursday’s event, writing on X that Trump believes the Medal of Honor is “secondary to the medal he gives his billionaire funders.”

“He doesn’t care about our military or their sacrifices,” they added.

Retired Navy intelligence officer and veterans’ advocate Travis Akers felt similarly, posting on Friday that Trump’s comments were “like a fever dream.” In a separate post, Akers said Trump’s remarks were “disgusting” and “offensive on so many levels.”

“I am still trying to wrap my head around how grossly and despicably Donald Trump insulted Medal of Honor recipients last night,” Akers said.