TV News LIES

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of US national intelligence, hoped to uncover evidence that Barack Obama and his national security team conspired to undermine Donald Trump in a slow-motion coup.

But if her crusade was aimed at proving that Obama embarked on a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely show that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump, Gabbard made a mistake. A previously classified annexe to a report by another special counsel, John Durham – appointed towards the end of Trump’s first presidency – has further undermined Gabbard’s case.

It was a quixotic enterprise from the start.

After all, the 2019 report from Robert Mueller, the original special counsel appointed to investigate the Russia allegations, and a bipartisan five-volume report the following year from the Senate intelligence committee – then chaired by Marco Rubio, now Trump
’s secretary of state – both affirmed the offending January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which expressed “high confidence” in Russian interference.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, seemed to validate the intelligence’s premise in 2018 when, standing beside Trump at a news conference in Helsinki, he admitted wanting him to win.

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Senior Republican lawmakers are condemning the decision of their party leader, Donald Trump, to fire the leading US labor market statistician after a report that showed the national economy added just 73,000 jobs – far fewer than expected – in July.

The disappointing figures – coupled with a downward revision of the two previous months amounting to 258,000 fewer jobs and data showing that economic output and consumer spending slowed in the first half of the year – point to an overall economic deterioration in the US.

Trump defended his decision to fire US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner Erika McEntarfer. Without evidence to back his claims, the president wrote on social media that were numbers were “RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad” and the US economy was, in fact, “BOOMING” on his watch.

But the firing of McEntarfer, who had been confirmed to her role in January 2024 during Joe Biden’s presidency, has alarmed members of Trump’s own party.

“If the president is firing the statistician because he doesn’t like the numbers but they are accurate, then that’s a problem,” said Wyoming Republican senator Cynthia Lummis. “It’s not the statistician’s fault if the numbers are accurate and that they’re not what the president had hoped for.”

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More than 50 signatures on New York mayor Eric Adams’ petition to run as an independent candidate in November’s election are fraudulent, according to a report published on Friday.

The Gothamist said it had found 52 signatures from people who said their names were forged, including signatures of three people who turned out to be dead. The publication cited others who said they were deceived into signing the petitions.

The discovery, if confirmed, is likely to be insignificant to Adams’ independent campaign, which is required to produce 7,500 signatures to qualify him as a candidate. The Adams campaign has turned in nearly 50,000 signatures.

Still, the finding adds complexity to a race to lead the nation’s largest city that pits the incumbent mayor against Democratic party nominee Zohran Mamdani, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and ex-prosecutor Jim Walden.

Cuomo and Walden, like Adams, are running as independents.

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The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History said it is slated to restore the placard with information about President Trump’s two impeachments after removing it from the exhibit last month. 

The museum said in a Saturday statement that the section will be “updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history.”

The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed source familiar with the exhibit plans, that the removal of the placard occurred as part of an internal content review the institution agreed to after pressure from President Trump’s administration to get rid of the art museum director.

The Smithsonian said on Saturday that the placard, part of the exhibit “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” did not meet the institution’s standards and argued no one within the administration asked the museum to remove the information.

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An independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees has opened an investigation into Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel who brought two criminal cases against then-candidate Donald Trump before his election to the White House last year.

The Office of Special Counsel confirmed Saturday that it was investigating Smith on allegations he engaged in political activity through his inquiries into Trump. Smith was named special counsel by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 and his special counsel title is entirely distinct from the agency now investigating him. The office has no criminal enforcement power but does have the authority to impose fines and other sanctions for violations.

It was not clear what basis exists to contend that Smith’s investigations were political in nature or that he violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that bans certain public officials from engaging in political activity. Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, had earlier this week encouraged the office to scrutinize Smith’s activities and had alleged that his conduct was designed to help then-President Joe Biden and his vice president Kamala Harris, both Democrats.

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Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, has quietly been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a lower-security facility in Texas, a federal Bureau of Prisons official confirmed Aug. 1.

The transfer comes as Maxwell’s attorneys are pressing the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn her conviction while also seeking a pardon or commutation for her from President Donald Trump in exchange for her cooperation in the Epstein investigation and broader sex trafficking issues.

Maxwell spent two days last week talking to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche – Trump’s former personal defense lawyer – at a courthouse near the Tallahassee prison where she was serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking related to Epstein.

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