MAGA Is Already Spinning Wild Conspiracies on Eric Adams’s Indictment

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is finding some strange defenders in the wake of a federal indictment: the MAGA crowd.

Donald Trump’s fans—who are eager to demonize the Department of Justice, New York courts, and what they claim is the “weaponization of our country’s prosecutorial resources”—came to Adams’s defense in droves Wednesday night.

Adams is expected to face federal charges in a federal corruption investigation. Federal agents raided his residence Thursday morning, and top officials in his administration have similarly been raided by the FBI and indicted, with several resigning.

In a Trumpian turn, Adams has protested his innocence by implying that the probe is a witch hunt and saying that the charges are “based on lies.” The New York City mayor also cast blame on the federal government’s immigration response in the city, stating, “The federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief.”

Republicans pounced on Adams’s comments about migrants and decided the investigation must be a hoax. “If you’re wondering why the system turned on one of its own …” wrote commentator Tomi Lauren, attaching a separate video of Adams complaining about the pressure on public services from increased immigration.

“He was told to shut up by the ‘Democratic’ Party after this,” wrote Elon Musk, responding to a right-wing account posting the same speech. Some even suggested it was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s doing.

Billionaire Bill Ackman agreed. “Eric loudly spoke the truth on the migrant problem in NYC and what the consequences would be for New Yorkers and the country,” wrote Ackman. “Doing so required bravery, as sharing these views publicly as a Democratic mayor did not win him any friends in the Party or with the Biden/Harris administration.” (Ackman later stated he believed the indictment was “devastating and credible.”)

Overall, it could become the GOP party line that because Adams criticized the Biden-Harris immigration policy, he had to be punished.

In reality, though the specific charges Adams will face are currently under wraps, the investigation is likely related to illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources and a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, not his policy on migrants.

This story has been updated.

Rudy Giuliani was disbarred Thursday by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, ending the legal career of another one of Donald Trump’s former lawyers.

It’s the second disbarment for Giuliani, who lost his law license in New York in July over his many false statements about the 2020 presidential election. In May, Giuliani’s D.C. law license was suspended after the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility recommended that he lose his law license over his involvement in lawsuits alleging election fraud in 2020.

“We conclude that disbarment is the only sanction that will protect the public, the courts, and the integrity of the legal profession, and deter other lawyers from launching similarly baseless claims in the pursuit of such wide-ranging yet completely unjustified relief,” the board’s recommendation at the time said.

On Thursday, the court of appeals agreed.

Giuliani isn’t the first Trump lawyer to face consequences. Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis was suspended in May for her efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in favor of Trump, and Jeffrey Clark, another election denier, was recommended for disbarment in August. One of the major architects of Trump’s 2020 efforts, John Eastman, is no longer allowed to practice law in California and is appealing a recommendation for his disbarment.

It’s the latest setback for Giuliani, who recently tried to sue President Biden for defamation only to have the lawsuit thrown out earlier this month. Last year, two Georgia election workers successfully sued him for defamation, and he now owes them $148 million. Giuliani then tried to file for bankruptcy, only to fail, leading to the poll workers suing him again to seize control of his assets, including his real estate holdings.

The former New York City mayor is in a heap of financial trouble, from losing his accountant over poorly managed debts to trying and failing to persuade Trump to settle seven-figure legal debts. His WABC radio show was canceled for 2020 election lies, and he resorted to selling his own brand of “Rudy Coffee” to make some extra cash.

But his money troubles may be self-inflicted. In May, his creditors called out his “extravagant lifestyle” and “gross mismanagement,” accusing him of accomplishing “almost nothing” in his bankruptcy case. He still owes money to his former attorneys, who say he only paid them $214,000 of nearly $1.6 million in legal expenses.

Giulaini is still in legal trouble in Georgia and Arizona for election interference and is facing a pending sexual harassment lawsuit from one of his former assistants. It’s clear that the man once known as “America’s mayor” is now America’s laughingstock.  

This story has been updated.

Despite deleting an offensive, racist social media post against Haitian Americans on Wednesday, Representative Clay Higgins has doubled down, claiming that it was “all true.”

After making the post, which referred to multiple stereotypes, including the debunked racist rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are capturing and eating pets, Higgins faced immediate backlash online, and Representative Steven Horsford introduced a resolution to censure him.

Higgins deleted the post, and was defended by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called Higgins a “dear friend of mine” and told the press, “I’m sure he probably regrets some of the language he used. But you know, we move forward. We believe in redemption around here.”

But later Wednesday evening, Higgins said the exact opposite. “It’s all true. I can put up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to,” he told CNN. “I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I’ll say what I want.

“It’s not a big deal to me. It’s like something stuck to the bottom of my boot. Just scrape it off and move on with my life,” Higgins said.

Horsford told CNN that he confronted Higgins on the House floor, trying to convince him that his comments had real consequences, and he was attacking people who have done nothing wrong.

“I asked him specifically to remove this post, and he said, ‘I’m going to pray about it.’ What do you need to pray about? Just do what is right and stop this hateful rhetoric that is causing people to feel targeted. He told me no,” Horsford said to Anderson Cooper. “And that is when I said, if you refuse, I will take this to the floor, we will move for a resolution to censure you, and that is exactly what we did.”

Republicans, led by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, have continued peddling racist attacks against Haitian immigrants, with Trump using them to bolster his call for mass deportations. Vance has been unrepentant, even defending his fabrication of the story. Meanwhile, Springfield has faced violent threats to its hospitals, schools, and government buildings, and Trump is trying to spread the rumor to another small town: Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Will Republicans face any consequences for their racist fearmongering?

Did Donald Trump just make Jack Smith’s job that much easier by admitting that he knows he lost the 2020 election?

During a speech Wednesday in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump appeared to give up the game when speaking about his performance four years ago.

“We did much better by the way, in the election of 2020, than we did in 2016,” Trump said.

“Millions and millions of votes more—more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country,” Trump said. This election-denying claim simply isn’t true, because Trump got roughly 74 million votes, while President Joe Biden got 81 million.

“But they beat us by a whisker. They beat us by a little whisker,” Trump said. “He beat us from the basement.”

Of course, it’s important to know that pretty much every time Trump opens his mouth, his words are admissible in court. So admitting that he didn’t win the election could potentially hurt the former president in court—specifically, in his election interference case in Washington, D.C., where special counsel Smith is seeking to prove that Trump knew he lost the 2020 election but still tried to overturn the results.

Trump has said he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker” before, during an interview earlier this month with podcaster Lex Fridman.

“We had a man in there that should’ve never been in there,” Trump said, speaking about Biden. “They kept him in a basement, they used Covid, they cheated, but they used Covid to cheat. They cheated without Covid too.”

Moments later, the former president claimed he had “lost by a whisker” in 2020. But after his interview, Trump claimed he was just joking.

“I did that sarcastically,” he said. “All you have to do is look at it, and they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes, the most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which is what I got in 2016, you can’t be beaten.”

Despite the obvious confusion Trump’s little joke caused, the former president has decided that “lost by a whisker” will be part of the hot air he intends to blow on the campaign trail and that its meaning, like everything he says, is whatever suits him.

Republican Representative Clay Higgins made a racist attack on Haitians Wednesday, referencing several racist tropes and the debunked pet-eating conspiracy from Ohio.

In his post on X (formerly Twitter), the Louisiana congressman said, “These Haitians are wild. Eating pets, vudu, nastiest country in the western hemisphere, cults, slapstick gangsters … but damned if they don’t feel all sophisticated now, filing charges against our President and VP.”

Higgins was apparently upset that a Haitian American nonprofit organization took advantage of an Ohio law allowing citizens to file affidavits for criminal offenses, and filed charges against Donald Trump and J.D. Vance for spreading the debunked rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, captured and ate pets, ducks, and geese.

Higgins’s post is not only bigoted but also echoes the same sentiments as Trump, Vance, and many other right-wing figures who have called for Haitians legally in the United States to be deported. Many of these figures, led by the Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees, have continued attacking Haitians despite the uptick in violent threats against schools, hospitals, and government buildings in Springfield.

Recently, Trump has expanded his attacks against Haitian immigrants from Springfield to another small town, Charleroi, Pennsylvania. As was the case in Ohio, Charleroi’s town officials have pushed back, with Charleroi Borough Manager Joe Manning remarking, “There’s what the former president is saying, and then there’s easily observable reality.”

Manning told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that the Haitian community has helped fill jobs in the small Pennsylvania town and even showed solidarity with workers at a factory that was closing. But details like that are of little concern to people like Higgins, Trump, and Vance, who refuse to let the facts get in the way of a racist narrative they think will help them politically.