'Propaganda': Trump lawyer whines that voters shouldn't be told about his legal problems – Raw Story
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Donald Trump’s attorney thinks voters should be shielded from knowing about the legal problems facing the former president.
Christina Bobb said on Newsmax that officials spreading “propaganda” about Trump criminal cases — he’s facing 91 charges in four jurisdictions — is tantamount to election interference.
Bobb was specifically talking about Shenna Bellows, Maine’s secretary of state who last week became the second official to rule Trump should be disqualified from the ballot under the Constitution’s 14th amendment.
It states that anybody who takes part in an insurrection against the U.S. is ineligible from holding public office. A similar ruling was made earlier last month in Colorado.
“This narrative that Trump isn’t going to be eligible, trying to instill fear in the voters that oh, maybe I shouldn’t vote for him… maybe I shouldn’t follow him because he won’t be on the ballot,” Bobb said.
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“They’re trying to discourage people from supporting Donald Trump, thinking he’s got all these legal problems. That is election interference and she needs to be held accountable for it.”
Bobb said Bellows should be impeached for her decision.
“I would encourage the attorney general or the district attorneys in Maine to take a closer look at this and possibly investigate [Ms Bellows] for abuse of authority, abuse of power and election interference because this, no doubtedly, is election interference,” she told Newsmax. The interview was reported by The Independent.
“Even if she’s overruled, even if the likely outcome — which is that Trump will be on the ballot — even if that happens, she is interfering with the election by putting out all of this propaganda.”
Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is taking the fight to former President Donald Trump with a new ad scorching him for lying about her record during an event in New Hampshire, reported The Daily Beast on Tuesday.
In particular, she took aim at a Trump ad that went after her tax record.
"The ad, which focuses on a non-existent gas tax in South Carolina during her time as governor, marks the first major dustup between the two candidates, as The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday," reported Jake Lahut. "'I see the commercials that you see, and I’ve noticed that President Trump is giving me some attention,' Haley said before kicking off a Q&A with voters at Wentworth by the Sea, a swanky ocean shore country club. 'And I appreciate that, because that means he sees what we’re seeing, but in his commercials and in his temper tantrums, every single thing that he’s said has been a lie.'"
In reality, Haley did in 2016 back a proposal that included a gas tax increase along with income tax cuts — but she never passed it, and, as she noted in the ad, Trump himself proposed a federal 25 cent per gallon gas tax increase in 2018. Haley has been running on abolishing the federal gas tax altogether in her 2024 presidential campaign.
Haley went on to attack Trump for his handling of the economy, saying that job conditions might have been "great," but that “our kids will never forgive us” for the $8 trillion added to the national debt under Trump to help continue that growth. “You don’t go and pretend to have a good economy by putting us in debt.”
In recent weeks, Haley has become more of a focus of the Republicans who want an alternative to another Trump nomination, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once considered the strongest Trump alternative, appears to be headed for campaign collapse.
But despite this, Trump still dominates the field, with the latest FiveThirtyEight aggregates showing Trump with a 50-point lead over both Haley and DeSantis.
Former President Donald Trump is simply not telling the truth when he says Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows "unilaterally" decided to disqualify him from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, said former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC Tuesday.
"By all accounts, it seems like she was following the law and Trump is saying she wasn't following the law," said anchor Jason Johnson.
"I think the procedural attack on the secretary of state is completely misguided," said Weissmann, who previously worked for special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation.
READ MORE: Five unresolved questions surrounding the Jan. 6 attack
"Let's leave aside, for the moment, whether you agree or disagree with her decision," said Weissmann. "She could have ruled the opposite way. The issue of what her authority is is absolutely clear under Maine law. The way Maine law works is that initially the decision is made by the secretary of state as to whether somebody is qualified. It's just as if they were under 35 years old. If there was a teenager running for office, the secretary of state would make a decision about whether that person should be on the ballot."
"But as the secretary of state put in her decision, she is not the last word," Weissmann continued. "She makes a decision. She then very responsibly stayed her decision and noted to the parties they're appellate rights. They can appeal to the Maine courts to determine whether she has abused her discretion, whether she has abused the law in any way, and ultimately … [they] can try to go to the United States Supreme Court. So procedurally, she did all the right things. I would note, she held a hearing, she gave both sides an opportunity to be heard, to protect witnesses, to put in exhibits, to make objections. All of that was done. So she followed the Maine law to the letter."
"To be fair, both sides could appeal the decision to the courts, and that's what we are seeing now," added Weissmann. "So it's wrong to characterize this as, oh, the secretary of state is the only person who is unilaterally making a decision. That is the way Maine has structured the initial decision. But that's not the final word."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Andrew Weissmann says Trump is "misguided" on Maine lawwww.youtube.com
Former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, the pentecostal evangelical Christian who made international headlines in 2015, has now been ordered to pay a total of more than $360,000 after refusing to issue a marriage license to a local same-sex couple that year, ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in support of marriage equality.
Davis, who once told supporters she is a “soldier for Christ,” was ordered by U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning on Tuesday to pay attorneys of the couple $260,104 in fees and expenses, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. She previously was ordered by a jury to pay the couple, David Ermold and David Moore, a total of $100,000 in damages. In March of 2022 a federal judge found Davis had violated the couple’s constitutional rights.
While the elected county clerk, Davis was jailed for several days after defying a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citing her personal religious beliefs, she had claimed she issued marriage licenses under “God’s authority,” and refused.
“The question is simple — did Davis knowingly violate the law? The answer here is clear — yes,” Judge Bunning wrote in 2022. “Ultimately, this Court’s determination is simple — Davis cannot use her own constitutional rights as a shield to violate the constitutional rights of others while performing her duties as an elected official.”
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Several couples sued Davis, who lost but appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to take her case.
But Justice Clarence Thomas, now embattled in a series of serious ethics scandals, used the opportunity to attack the 2015 Obergefell ruling, which found the U.S. Constitution provides same-sex couples with the same rights and responsibilities to marriage as different-sex couples.
Thomas claimed Davis “may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision, but she will not be the last.”
“Due to Obergefell, those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefelland its effect on other antidiscrimination laws,” Thomas wrote in 2020, five years after the decision, which did not produce the effect he claimed.
Davis lost her re-election race in 2018 to a Democrat.
RELATED: Kim Davis: Gays ‘Wanted to Shove’ the SCOTUS Ruling ‘Down My Throat and Make Me Eat It for Dinner’
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