You’ll Never Guess Who Tried to Interfere in the 2020 Election

A report from the inspector general’s office alleges that three senior Justice Department officials under Donald Trump had “partisan political motivation” for publicizing certain department activities ahead of the 2020 election.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 53-page report, which was published by ABC News Tuesday as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request, detailed the efforts of senior officials to target states with Democratic governors ahead of the 2020 elections. That could potentially violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in certain political activities in their official capacities.

In August 2020, the Department of Justice published a press release announcing that it had requested information about government-run nursing homes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, “despite having been provided data indicating that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care issues were in other states,” according to the report.

While no one complained about the press release at the time, more recently, current and former officials described it as “unusual and inappropriate.”

As the election approached, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division pressured individuals in the department’s Civil Division to send a letter to New York officials seeking data on Covid-19 related deaths in private nursing homes.

The report said that individuals in the Civil Division were “led to believe” that the order to make information about this letter public had come straight from then–Attorney General Bill Barr.

In October 2020, a senior official with the DOJ’s Public Affairs Department texted colleagues that they wanted to leak information about the letter, as well as other information about an investigation into state-run nursing homes in New Jersey.

“I’m trying to get [them] to do letters to [New Jersey and New York] respectively on nursing homes. Would like to package them together and let [a certain tabloid] break it. Will be our last play on them before election but it’s a big one,” the official wrote, according to the report.

Then, a week before the election, information about the letter was provided to a New York–area tabloid and published, accusing New York authorities of undercounting deaths in nursing homes—which, to be clear, they actually had done, according to the report.

On October 27, 2020, the New York Post published an exclusive article titled “DOJ seeks more NY nursing home data after finding COVID death undercount.”

“The then upcoming 2020 election may have been a factor in the timing and manner of those actions and announcing them to the public,” Horowitz wrote in the report. He concluded that the three officials had violated the DOJ’s media contacts policy, and referred his findings to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Donald Trump couldn’t help but gloat Tuesday that he’d successfully bullied Mark Zuckerberg into making a spate of policy changes at Meta that will allow for the rampant spread of misinformation.

During a press conference, one reporter asked the president-elect whether he thought he had anything to do with Zuckerberg’s decision to supposedly recommit his social media platforms to free speech by demolishing its fact-checking system, as well as certain content filters and restrictions. 

“Do you think he’s directly responding to the threats that you have made to him in the past?” the  reporter asked. 

“Probably,” Trump replied.

Meta’s new policy changes comes as Trump prepares to return to the White House and make good on the threats he’s been making to Zuckerberg for months. 

“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison—as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote in his book Save America, which was published in August. 

The president-elect had previously called out his buddy “ZUCKERBUCKS” in a July post on Truth Social, promising to “pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time.” 

Trump’s outrage at the technocrat was in direct response to Zuckerberg’s efforts to curb Covid-19 misinformation, which Trump readily provides. Zuckerberg’s content moderation efforts were rebranded on the right as a kind of censorship, rather than a public health and safety service. 

Zuckerberg has since gushed over the president-elect’s “badass” response to almost being assassinated, and donated a cool $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund through Meta. 

Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that Meta’s platforms Facebook, Instagram, and Threads would no longer have third-party fact-checkers, instead relying on X’s model of community notes, in which the mob decides the truth. Additionally, Zuckerberg said he’d remove restrictions around topics such as gender and immigration to create space for right-wing talking points and opinions that might have been silenced due to outdated concerns over the spread of dangerous misinformation or, hey, even hate speech. Zuckerberg also said he would raise the threshold for removing any problematic content to allow for a freer flow of ideas, whose quality will soon go entirely unvetted. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene is unsurprisingly feeling empowered by Trump’s plan to change the Gulf of Mexico’s name to the “Gulf of America.” Trump floated the idea at a press conference on Tuesday, claiming that the United States already had ownership of the Gulf anyway.

“We’re gonna be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America … what a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate … Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country. They can stop them.”

Greene appeared on popular right-wing commentator Benny Johnson’s show on Tuesday to gleefully reaffirm the president-elect’s goofy idea.

“I was so fired up watching the press conference today … I directed my leg staff to immediately draft legislation … to officially change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Green told Johnson. “And Congress has to do this.… It’s absolutely the right thing to do. We change post office names all the time up here. You better bet we are absolutely going to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Let’s go!”

This is Trump’s latest dream of world domination, as he has mentioned buying Greenland, pitched Canada as the fifty-first state, and raised taking over the Panama Canal.

The president-elect isn’t the first elected official to try to change the Gulf’s name. Former Representative Stephen Holland proposed a bill doing the exact same thing in 2012—but as a joke, a commentary on his Republican colleagues’ prejudice toward Mexico. Trump’s version is an oddly cosmetic nod to U.S. hegemony. The odds of Greene’s bill surviving remain to be seen.

Trump may be able to change the Gulf’s name on U.S. reference maps, but getting other countries (like … Mexico) to recognize it as such is a separate issue. The name Gulf of Mexico is credited to Baptiste Boazio, who was explorer Francis Drake’s illustrator in the 1580s.

Donald Trump has successfully blocked the release of special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the two federal criminal investigations into the president-elect, at least for the time being.

Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by Trump, ruled Tuesday that the Justice Department can’t release the report, in response to a request from Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, two Trump aides who were the president-elect’s co-defendants in his classified documents case. Smith was expected to complete his report in the coming days, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has said he plans to release the report publicly.

Cannon’s ruling states that Garland, the Justice Department, Smith, and “all of their officers, agents, and employees, and all persons acting in active concert or participation with such individuals” can’t release any part of the report until three days after a federal appeals court rules on the issue.

However, the case is pending in the Eleventh Circuit, which is outside of Cannon’s jurisdiction, adding confusion to the fact that she technically doesn’t have the authority to make such a ruling. Plus, Cannon only presided over Trump’s classified documents case and not his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Ever since Trump appointed her to the federal bench, Cannon has gone out of her way to give the president-elect favorable rulings, especially regarding the classified documents case, which she dismissed on flimsy grounds. Once again, Cannon has  given Trump what he wants, albeit temporarily.

It backs up Trump’s idea that the law and justice system don’t apply to him, and should in fact legally protect him. He has the support of the conservative-controlled Supreme Court, which gave him near-total immunity last year. With Trump’s inauguration less than two weeks away, he may just run out the clock before the public can see the evidence against him that should have resulted in a successful prosecution.

Donald Trump just announced a massive new deal with a man connected to a $600,000 payment to the FBI informant convicted of lying to the FBI about Hunter Biden’s business decisions.

On Tuesday the president-elect announced a $20 billion investment from Emirati company DAMAC to build new data centers throughout the Unied States, according to CNBC.

The company was founded by Trump’s friend billionaire Hussain Sajwani. He and DAMAC are pledging “at least” $20 billion toward the centers, according to Trump. “They may go double, or even somewhat more than double, that amount of money,” the president-elect said. The “first phase” will begin in Texas, Arizona, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Oklahoma. Trump has overstated similar investments in the past.

In 2020 FBI informant Alexander Smirnov received $600,000 from Economic Transformation Technologies, or ETT. He began lying to the FBI about Hunter and Joe Biden that year, claiming they were engaged in bribery. DAMAC chair Farooq Arjomand is a large ETT shareholder, and has strong ties to Trump via Sajwani.

This is the second high-profile investment announcement Trump has made since his election victory, with Japanese billionaire investor Masayoshi Son pledging $100 billion in American spending in December.