Guilty! Trumpist Peter Navarro Convicted of Contempt of Congress

Donald Trump’s former adviser and top loyalist Peter Navarro was convicted Thursday of criminal contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the congressional January 6 investigative committee.

Navarro was indicted in June 2022 for failing to provide testimony and failing to provide documents to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. He has said he didn’t comply with the subpoenas because Trump had told him to claim executive privilege—except Trump failed to tell the January 6 committee about this, nor did he submit anything to back up Navarro’s claim. The jury deliberated for just four hours before returning the guilty verdict.

“That man thinks he’s above the law,” prosecutor John Crabb said during closing arguments. “In this country, nobody is above the law.”

Each of the two counts against Navarro carries a maximum one-year prison sentence, as well as a maximum $100,000 fine. Navarro is the second Trump ally to be found guilty of defying a subpoena related to January 6. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was similarly found guilty of contempt of Congress last year for refusing to comply with a January 6 committee subpoena. He was sentenced to just four months in prison and a $6,500 fine. Bannon appealed his case and has yet to serve his sentence.

Navarro had tried to claim executive privilege before the trial too. He argued that Trump had directed him to assert privilege so he could avoid the charges. Presiding Judge Amit Mehta rejected Navarro’s request last week.

Navarro is now the latest member of Trump’s inner circle to face legal consequences for the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has been indicted multiple times himself, alongside dozens of allies.

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy desperately tried to tweet a CNN town hall into existence.

Ramaswamy announced in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, last week that he would be appearing in a CNN town hall in New York on September 12. But sources familiar with the matter told Semafor that the event was never actually confirmed.

One source said that Ramaswamy wrote the tweet after CNN told his campaign that the event would not take place on that day, and that it was an attempt to “will it into existence.” Apparently Ramaswamy’s team was so sure that the town hall would happen that some of them bought tickets to the U.S. Open because they planned to be in New York that week.

In a statement, a CNN spokesperson said that CNN does not currently have an event scheduled with Ramaswamy. “The information in Mr. Ramaswamy’s post is incorrect and there is not a CNN Town Hall currently planned for September 12th,” the spokesperson told Semafor.

When shown the statement from CNN, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign, said that they had confirmed the September 12 slot and even selected a moderator.

Lying on Twitter is just another page Ramaswamy seems to be taking out of the Trump playbook, but too bad for him he doesn’t have the power of manifestation to back it up.

Elon Musk personally foiled a Ukrainian attack on Russia last year when he cut off Starlink internet service near the Crimean coast, according to excerpts from a new biography of the Tesla founder.

Musk became involved with the war shortly after Russia invaded in February 2022, when he agreed to set up a nationwide network of satellite internet terminals, called Starlink, throughout Ukraine. This would help protect against Russian cyberattacks and allow the Ukrainian military to maintain constant contact while on the battlefield. An August profile of Musk in The New Yorker by Ronan Farrow revealed that Musk repeatedly threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink, which has become crucial to the country’s military success.

In Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, which will be released next week, he reveals that in one incident last year, Musk ordered his engineers to turn off the Starlink communications satellites just as explosives-laden Ukrainian submarine drones approached a Russian naval fleet. The submarines “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson wrote.

Musk apparently was worried the attack would spark a “mini-Pearl Harbor” should Russia respond with nuclear weapons—based on conversations he was having with Russian officials. So his solution was to insert himself into a conflict in which he has no business meddling nor experience in solving.

Ukrainian soldiers have also lost internet connection on the front lines in other regions, forcing battalions to retreat or commanders to drive into battle just to be in radio range. U.S. and Ukrainian officials told The New Yorker they believed SpaceX, which manages Starlink, had cut off the internet terminals in certain areas, including major battlefields—including Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Donetsk.

Musk has said he takes issue with Starlink being used for warfare and has previously advocated for a peaceful end to the Ukraine war. Except, his ideas for peace involve talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin and coming up with a “peace plan” that involves ceding swathes of Ukraine to Russian control.

Musk keeps saying his ultimate goal is to “de-escalate” the war and achieve peace. But all of his actions seem more geared toward making him the center of attention, no matter what.

The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden plans to indict the first son on a gun charge. The only problem is that the conservative Supreme Court may have already overturned the law Biden allegedly violated.

Biden had initially agreed to a deal in which he would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of tax evasion and participated in a pretrial program for a gun offense, allowing him to avoid jail time. When that deal fell apart in July, the Justice Department appointed David Weiss as a special counsel to investigate Biden further.

Weiss announced his plan Wednesday to indict Biden on just the gun charge by the end of the month. The charge is over Biden answering “no” on a federal form he filled out while buying a handgun when asked if he was an “unlawful user” of drugs. Biden has struggled with crack cocaine addiction and was having trouble staying sober at the time.

Except Weiss may not actually be able to bring the charge. Last year, the Supreme Court significantly loosened gun control laws when the conservative majority ruled that Americans have a general right to arm themselves in public. Biden’s lawyers have already argued that the ruling makes trying to prosecute the first son on gun charges pointless.

The Supreme Court ruling has already been cited in another, much lower-profile case. The Fifth Circuit appeals court ruled in August that drug users shouldn’t be automatically banned from owning guns. The court overturned the conviction of a Mississippi man who had two guns in his car during a 2022 traffic stop and admitted to regular marijuana use, although he was not driving under the influence at the time.

“Our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” the three-judge panel said in the ruling.

Republicans have complained that Biden got a “sweetheart” plea deal and that the Justice Department has treated him with kid gloves. But it might be a little harder to take issue with Biden being exonerated by a ruling from the Supreme Court, which was stacked with conservatives by GOP leader Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is planning a “family-style” candlelight dinner with his two adult sons at Mar-a-Lago to help pay the legal bills of his co-defendants and witnesses, according to The Messenger.

While the details of the event are still being worked out, it is expected to raise somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million for the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, a fund set up to pay the legal bills of others implicated across Trump’s four indictments.

Similar to previous fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago, the dinner will be held in one of the resort’s private dining rooms where the table can seat about two dozen attendees. “It’s a family-style dinner, very intimate and exclusive,” said one Trump official.

The Patriot Legal Defense Fund was created by a group of Trump allies led by Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump adviser. Before that, the Save America super PAC was primarily footing the legal expenses of the former president and his allies caught up in the indictments. Sources told The Messenger that Save America will primarily cover Trump’s legal expenses and work in tandem with the Patriot Legal Defense Fund.

While the Patriot Legal Defense Fund is technically separate from both Save America and Trump’s 2024 campaign, allowing it to sidestep the Federal Election Committee’s campaign finance rules, there are some ethical questions remaining. The fund’s website originally redirected clicks to “Donate Now” to Trump’s campaign website, according to The Daily Beast.

Trump is already hosting a $100,000-per-plate fundraiser on Thursday night for Rudy Giuliani, who has been embroiled in an expensive series of lawsuits that have left the former mayor broke and begging for financial assistance.

As the legal bills continue to pile up, these fundraisers will only become more frequent, and it’s possible that the number of people willing to shell out for an expensive dinner with the Trumps will wane. Either way, there is no way that $100K chicken tastes that good.