TV News LIES

Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate and co-conspirator who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex-trafficking crimes, is reportedly preparing a “commutation application” for the Trump administration to review, according to new allegations from a whistleblower shared with House Democrats.

Democrats on the House judiciary committee announced on Monday that they had received information from a whistleblower that indicates that the British former socialite, 63, is working on filing a commutation application. They also said Maxwell had been receiving special treatment at federal prison camp Bryan in Texas – the minimum-security facility she was transferred to earlier this year.

Congressman Jamie Raskin, the ranking member and top Democrat on the House judiciary committee, stated in a news release that the prison’s warden was also “helping” Maxwell “copy, print, and send documents” to support her bid for clemency.

The exact content of this “commutation application” was unclear, Raskin added.

Raskin states that according to the whistleblower, Maxwell has been receiving “customized” meals that are “personally delivered” to her cell, and that the warden has “personally arranged” private meetings for Maxwell and her visitors. The visits allegedly include providing a “special cordoned-off area” for visitors to arrive, as well as “an assortment of snacks and refreshments for her guests”.

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The family of British political commentator Sami Hamdi, who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in late October while on a speaking tour in the US, say he is set to be released and will be able to “return home soon”.

“The government has agreed to release Sami,” the family said in a statement on Monday. “He will be able to return home soon insha’Allah.”

Hamdi was detained on 26 October at San Francisco international airport. At the time, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said his detention appeared to be in retaliation for the Muslim political commentator’s criticism of Israel while touring the US, calling it a “blatant affront to free speech”, and called for his release.

Later on 26 October, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said that Hamdi’s visa had been revoked and that he was in “ICE custody pending removal”.

“Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country,” McLaughlin said.

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Prominent Donald Trump supporter Sean Davis hit out at Republicans ― and the president himself ― in a scathing takedown on X over the weekend.

Davis, CEO and co-founder of the conservative website The Federalist, called out whoever “is advising congressional Republicans on strategy right now,” saying they have “an IQ barely approaching room temperature.”

“Republicans right now have no accomplishments, no plans, and no vision,” he said, asking, “Why on earth would anyone be excited to go vote for them 12 months right now?”

“Trump needs to ditch the foreign policy crap and focus all his attention on the domestic economy, which is still not working for the majority of people,” he said. “Right now he looks weak and rudderless. Be mad all you want, but it’s the truth.”

Davis railed: “You cannot have a viable country or future when half your country and all its young people are locked out of the economy and locked out of ever owning a home or much of anything beyond next month’s streaming subscription.”..

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A federal judge appointed to the bench in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan announced his resignation over the weekend in a damning public letter, excoriating the Trump administration for its assault on the rule of law.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf didn’t hide behind niceties in the missive, published by The Atlantic on Sunday, instead stating his opinion bluntly.

“President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment,” he warned.

“This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.”

Wolf proceeded to detail numerous abuses of the law by Trump and his appointees, describing the blatant corruption of justice as an “existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.”

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He spent the twilight of his career denouncing Donald Trump as a threat to the republic he loved. But Dick Cheney arguably laid the foundations of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.

Cheney, who served under George W Bush for eight years, was one of the most influential and polarising vice-presidents in US history. Some critics said they would never forgive him for pushing the US to invade Iraq on a false pretext but suggested that his opposition to Trump offered a measure of redemption.

Perhaps Cheney’s defining legacy, however, was the expansion of powers for a position that he never held himself: the presidency. Cheney used the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks as a pretext to assert a muscular executive authority that Trump now amplifies and exploits to challenge the system of checks and balances.

The former vice-president died on Monday aged 84. The White House lowered flags to half-mast in remembrance of him but without the usual announcement or proclamation praising the deceased.

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Sam Rasoul, the Virginia Democrat who is currently the longest-serving Muslim state lawmaker in the US and who faced accusations of antisemitism over language condemning Israel’s assault on Gaza as genocide, scored a resounding victory in Tuesday’s election that he believes shows voters are craving honesty from politicians.

Rasoul, an American Palestinian state legislator since 2014, strengthened his majority as he was re-elected to an area of Virginia where the city of Roanoke leans Democrat and the surrounding areas are deeply conservative. In an election seen as a referendum on Trump’s policies, which have disproportionately affected Virginia, Rasoul increased his vote share from four years ago by more than 5% as Democrats trounced Republicans from the legislature to the governor’s mansion.

“A 70% victory in the Bible belt of Virginia for a Palestinian Muslim is really a validation, beyond just Democrats winning, that you can be bold on the Gaza genocide and still be victorious,” Rasoul told the Guardian.

His win came despite months of attack ads and rebukes from other party leaders in the state. He was accused of hate speech and antisemitism by his opponent, a Jewish Republican party member who ran as an independent, pro-Israel groups and senior members of his own party after he called the killing of at least 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023 “the most evil cleansing in human history” and blamed Zionism, which he labelled “a supremacist ideology created to destroy and coronquer everything and everyone in its way”.

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