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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Donald Trump Jr. has admitted that he personally signed one of the hush money checks now at the center of his father’s arrest on criminal charges. The former president’s son told right-wing network Newsmax that part of Mr. Trump’s indictment on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records refers to his own actions.

“That son is me. Like I said, clearly also not a campaign finance violation if it’s from his own trust, not to a campaign, not from the campaign, not from the funds raised from it,” he said.

“So, none of it actually makes any sense.”

In the criminal indictment unsealed on Tuesday, prosecutors allege that a check made out to Mr. Trump’s former “fixer” Michael Cohen was falsely recorded as a “retainer” in the Trump Organization’s business records.

The check was signed by former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg – who is now in Riker’s Island on a fraud conviction – “and the Defendant’s son, as trustees”.

The son in question was not named in the charging documents but Don Jr. later confirmed it was him as he joins his father in railing against the charges. Don Jr. has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the criminal case and the payment itself is not illegal.

Instead, prosecutors allege that a crime was committed when this payment – and many others – to Cohen were falsely recorded in the Trump Organization’s business records. The crime then reaches the level of a felony when the falsified records were made while in commission of another crime.

According to Manhattan prosecutors, Mr. Trump and Cohen carried out a “catch and kill” scheme in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Cohen allegedly made hush money payments on Mr. Trump’s behalf to suppress negative information about the presidential candidate. The payments were allegedly made to silence individuals over alleged affairs he had with women.

Mr. Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election,” the charging documents read.

Three specific alleged affairs and hush money payments were mentioned in the charging documents – a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, a $150,000 to former playboy model Karen McDougal and a $30,000 payment to a doorman at Trump Tower who claimed he had information that Mr. Trump had fathered a child with a woman while married to Melania Trump.

Mr. Trump then allegedly reimbursed Cohen but falsely recorded the payments as legal fees.

Back in 2019, Cohen testified before a House committee that Don Jr. signed some of the checks reimbursing him for the payment to Ms. Daniels. Cohen has already served jail time for his part in the hush money case and has now become prosecutor’s star witness in the case against Mr. Trump.

During Weisselberg’s trial last year, he testified that both of Mr. Trump’s adult sons, Don Jr. and Eric Trump, signed checks that he used to defraud authorities but insisted that no member of the Trump family played a part in his tax evasion scheme.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in order to conceal illegal activity connected to his 2016 presidential campaign. Each of the 34 criminal charges relates to an individual entry in the Trump Organization’s business records.

Mr. Trump surrendered to Manhattan authorities on Tuesday afternoon and was officially arrested on the charges. He then appeared in court for his arraignment before Judge Juan Merchan – the same judge who sentenced the Trump Organization and its CFO last year. Cutting a glum figure, he defiantly pleaded not guilty to all the charges and has continued to lash out at the judge and Manhattan DA in the aftermath.

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nodynasty4us · 11 months

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Noozmax illustrated a story about the drone incident in Moscow with pictures of a much more severely damaged building in the United States.

#newsmax #fake news

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makingdonalddrumpfagain · 10 months

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#newsmax

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mysharona1987 · 1 year

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But if Fox News and Rupert Murdoch with all their billions and resources caved…the rest of you are fucked beyond belief.

Not even joking here, you are.

Shit, it’s like that epic ending of The Boys when they openly declare: We are coming for you.

#news #newsmax #Trump #Republicans #democrats #smartmusic

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kp777 · 2 years

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Fox and friends confront billion-dollar US lawsuits over election fraud claims

#dominion voting systems #election fraud #fox news #newsmax #oan #fake news #right wing media

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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Ann Telnaes, Washington Post

* * * * 4 takeaways from the bombshell Fox News legal filing

1. How leaders at Fox viewed their business model

The filing is rife with examples of Fox News hosts and executives worrying that departing from Trump’s line, or questioning his team’s claims, might hurt their business model. They worried especially about Newsmax, which was less discerning in its coverage of Trump’s election conspiracy theories and saw a ratings boom at the time. The Fox executives acknowledged the shoddiness of Newsmax’s 2020 election coverage but also expressed concern the rival network was taking its viewers.

On Nov. 10, Fox News president Jay Wallace texted, “The Newsmax surge is a bit troubling — truly is an alternative universe when you watch, but it can’t be ignored. On Nov. 16, Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch emailed: “These people should be watched, if skeptically. … We don’t want to antagonize Trump further, but Giuliani taken with a large grain of salt. Everything at stake here.”

On Nov. 18, Fox executive Ron Mitchell put it more bluntly while noting that Newsmax was citing sources like the conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit: “This type of conspiratorial reporting might be exactly what the disgruntled FNC viewer is looking for.” Throughout, Fox seemed to recognize that it could not question fraud claims too thoroughly. After Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell’s news conference full of false and baseless claims on Nov. 19, Mitchell spoke derisively about their statements: “Will you be mentioning the international crime conspiracy to steal the election featuring Soros, Maduro, Chavez, Antifa, Cuba, and China?” he asked rhetorically.

2. Calling Out a False Statement by a GOP BigWig Will Get Your Fired

The filing repeatedly shows Fox News hosts and superiors objecting to how their colleagues fact-checked the Trump team’s claims. In one example, host Neil Cavuto cut away from White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who had claimed Democrats took positions on voting issues because they were “welcoming fraud” and “illegal voting.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cavuto said, adding, “Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this. I want to make sure that maybe they do have something to back that up.” The filing says Fox News executive Raj Shah’s team notified senior leadership that Cavuto’s actions amounted to a “Brand Threat.” The next day, another executive, Porter Berry, noted Newsmax was going after Cavuto and said, “They are just whacking us. Smart on their part.” In another instance, reporter Kristin Fisher fact-checked Giuliani and Powell’s Nov. 19 news conference, saying, “So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court.” She correctly noted the claims did not line up with what Trump lawyers were saying in court and that they had failed to provide evidence.

3. Deriding Giuliani, Powell and Fox hosts

The filing also makes clear that Fox acknowledged, broadly speaking, that the likes of Giuliani and Powell were total buffoons who should not be treated seriously and whose claims were certainly false. But such figures still got platforms on the network, as did certain hosts, even as some high-ranking people at the company derided their coverage. In addition to saying Giuliani should be taken with a “large grain of salt,” Murdoch called his Nov. 19 performance “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.” On Nov. 11, Hannity said, “Rudy is acting like an insane person.”

The evening of Nov. 19, Giuliani again appeared on Hannity’s show, with Hannity referring to “thousands of ballots out of thin air … a couple weeks after the election, which should concern everybody.”A Dobbs producer on Nov. 18 referred to “keeping in mind [Giuliani’s] insanity lately.” Dobbs’s show interviewed Giuliani repeatedly over the next week, including that night. Two days afterward, Fox executive David Clark called it “Crazy town” and said he was glad host Jeanine Pirro did not interview Giuliani and Powell on-air.

The reviews of Powell were even harsher. Ingraham called her a “complete nut” on Nov. 18. Shah called her claims “outlandish” on Nov. 23. Carlson called her a “lunatic” and a “Crazy person” earlier that month. He added that she was an “unguided missile” and again, perhaps presciently given the current circumstances, “dangerous as hell.” (Carlson, unlike others, applied on-air skepticism to Powell’s claims.) Powell appeared on Hannity’s show on Nov. 30.

4. The full picture of the dual posture at Fox

This, of course, is not the first time a spotlight has fallen on Fox’s handling of this period. During the hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, text messages emerged in which Fox hosts were much more critical of Trump’s actions surrounding that day than they ever were on the air.

They privately derided Trump for his conspiracy theories and for his delayed response when the riot began but showed little if any such concern to viewers. They recognized Trump was the catalyst for the Jan. 6 riot in a way they publicly discounted or ignored. It is no secret that the inner workings of any organization — news or otherwise — can be untidy when they come to light. That has been the case with past defamation suits against media companies.

But the entire, still-emerging picture of Fox is one of an organization that was scared to tell its viewers the full truth and instead internalized what it saw as the business value of airing false and baseless claims from noncredible actors (whether its own staff explicitly endorsed them or not). And its product reflected that posture in a way that has now put it in legal and financial jeopardy.

#False News #FOX #Rupert Murdoch #business model #late stage capitalism #anything for money #WAPO #Ann Telnaes #Newsmax #propaganda

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thehalfwaypost · 1 year

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#fox #fox news #newsmax #politics #satire

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mudwerks · 1 year

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(via DirecTV dumps Newsmax instead of paying new fee, drawing Republican outrage | Ars Technica)

why do republicans hate the free market?!?!

#I thought that was their overlord #right after maga-king #newsmax #bullshit right wing media sites

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renegadeurbanmediasource · 1 year

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youtube

I try, I mean I really do. I tell myself DAILY. SEVERAL times per DAY, "Not all Whites are evil!" Because if I give in then that means I'd be doing exactly what they do with Blacks! But when I see this CRAP… I just turned 50 last month and I have been saying this since I was 20! Whites have EVERYTHING! They go where they want and what they want when they get there! They ABSOLUTELY LOVE ZERO SUM GAMES! This WHOLE nation, hell PLANET is geared to their wellbeing! If we DARE to want to see people who look like us and have pride in ourselves that's WAY too much! Now we're going too far! When BET was still BLACK they called it "reverse racism", and "What if we had WET?" You do, it's spelled FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, CBS, HBO, CINEMAX, etc. In the 60s the BPP was the epitome of the phrase "do for self"! They had free breakfast programs and after-school programs to keep our kids out of trouble. They sponsored small biz and job training workshops. They kept the pimps and drug dealers at bay. Policed the police and were NOT racist or anti-white in the least. But that was too much for Ms. J. Edgar! She feared a Black Messiah! They fear us not because of what we are now but of what we can BECOME! That's why they mock us and denigrate us with nonsensical "we wuz kangz" and this bullshit "wokeism". Yet they are always quick to tell somebody to have thicker skin, don't be offended so easily, and don't get "triggered" (one of their favorite words! Then turn around and want to KILL anything BLACK because Idris Elba had the nerve to play Heimdall. Yes, Heimdall is a character in Norse mythology but he's FICTIONAL! Then they threaten a little Black princess because she DARED to play a FICTIONAL creature (Like Norse "gods" mermaids don't exist). Then what the F can we have? Sometimes I run out of patience with their childish tantrums!😡😡😡😡

#whitesupremacy #maga #crt #whiteprivilege #whitefragility #newsmax #antiblackracism #Youtube

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965m to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday.

The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

It came in a lawsuit filed by the relatives of five children and three educators killed in the mass shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders to the scene. A Texas jury in August awarded nearly $50m to the parents of another slain child.

The Connecticut trial featured tearful testimony from parents and siblings of the victims, who told about how they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show.

Strangers showed up at their homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media. Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house. Mark Barden told of how conspiracy theorists had urinated on the grave of his seven-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin.

Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But both in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant.

He called the proceedings a “kangaroo court”, mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs’ lawyer an ambulance chaser and labeled the case an affront to free speech rights. He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business.

“I’ve already said ‘I’m sorry’ hundreds of times and I’m done saying I’m sorry,” he said during his testimony.

Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on 14 December 2012. The defamation trial was held at a courthouse in Waterbury, about 20 miles (32km) from Newtown, where the attack took place.

The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars. Experts testified that Jones’ audience swelled when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show, as did his revenue from product sales.

In both the Texas lawsuit and the one in Connecticut, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.

Because he was already found liable, Jones was barred from mentioning free speech rights and other topics during his testimony.

Jones now faces a third trial, in Texas around the end of the year, in a lawsuit filed by the parents of another child killed in the shooting.

It is unclear how much of the verdicts Jones can afford to pay. During the trial in Texas, he testified he couldn’t afford any judgment over $2m. Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection. But an economist testified in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270m.

Meanwhile...

Conservative pundits are increasingly embracing far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, even as his financial losses mount and his professional future remains uncertain following a high-profile lawsuit. Right-wing outlets have not only adopted many of the fringe host’s conspiratorial affects and theories, but several have also provided Jones with a platform to spread his extremist brand of paranoid quackery.

The decision to give Jones an opportunity to find new audiences — or to tap into his own — is especially fraught right now, given that he was just found liable for defamation and forced to pay more than $45 million in damages to parents of a 6-year-old child killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. Jones now faces another defamation suit in Connecticut, also related to comments he made about Sandy Hook, which the talk show host and vitamin supplement salesman referred to as “a giant hoax.”

Although Jones has long been legitimized and defended by the right, conservative media’s increasingly open celebration of him appears to signal a new phase of their relationship with the serial fabulist. Conservatives are bringing him in from the fringe under the guise of free speech and fighting back against the supposed Big Tech censorship, using his deplatforming in 2018 and subsequent court-ordered payments in the Sandy Hook trial to transform him into a First Amendment martyr. And following the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, several right-wing hosts interviewed Jones as though he were a Casandra-like figure whose long history of alarmist warnings of government tyranny had finally come to pass.

Fox News’ top star Tucker Carlson reportedly regularly texts with Jones and has praised him in various venues repeatedly. In July, Carlson once again told his audience that the antisemitic Great Replacement conspiracy theory was real, but mainstream outlets wouldn’t acknowledge it for fear of being categorized alongside Alex Jones. Earlier this year, Carlson said Jones is “a lot more talented than I am” and generally endorsed his conspiracy theories about liberal philanthropist George Soros. Carlson has been a guest on Infowars and wrote a blurb for Jones’ new book.

Steve Bannon, the host of the War Room podcast and a former Trump chief strategist, appeared on an episode of Jones’ Infowars following the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago. He heaped accolades on Jones, recognizing Infowars as “one of the major news sources out there for the MAGA movement.” Along with Jones, Bannon proceeded to lay out wild, completely speculative conspiracy theories.

“I do not think it's beyond this administrative state and their deep state apparatus to actually try to work on the assassination of President Trump,” Bannon said, providing no evidence to support the claim.

Bannon then suggested that the FBI may have “planted stuff” — that is, incriminating evidence — during the search.

“Exactly. How do we know a hundred agents in there with their long history of planting things, didn't plant something classified,” Jones echoed.

“You're absolutely right,” Bannon responded. (That theory has since been adopted by Fox News hosts and Republican Sen. Rand Paul.)

One day earlier, Bannon hosted Jones on his own War Room podcast to praise the serial liar as the leading edge of conservative thought, using a string of military metaphors to make his point.

“If you think of military, you've always been like force recon. Or you've been like LRP, long-range patrol,” Bannon said. “You've been out ahead of, cutting, you know, cutting through, bushwhacking through and laying out the tracks and the trails for where the narrative, then the big narrative engine comes in back of it.”

Bannon also positioned Jones as a warrior and martyr that left-wing activists and tech companies are trying to silence. “They're trying to break you as a man and they're trying to break your incredible organization,” Bannon added.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also interviewed Jones the day after the Mar-a-Lago search, introducing him as “the most canceled man in America” and framing the interview as a defense of the principle of free speech. Kirk then proceeded to give Jones a platform to obfuscate and justify his long, well-documented history of Sandy Hook denial. Kirk then asked Jones to give his listeners advice on how to “keep on going — how do I push on through if people try to cancel me.”

Kirk later characterized Jones as a brave truth-teller, freeing his listeners from the blinders that had been placed on them. “How do you break people out of the comfort of the lies they live in?” Kirk asked Jones. “Because that’s what you do for a living.”

Jones eventually responded with an unhinged rant about who makes the best resistance fighters against what he believes is a demonic globalist cabal. “Because men haven’t been alpha males and stood up for Western civilization and the empowerment of the future and a pro-human future, we’ve allowed sick, degenerate alpha males to come in and threaten the women, and children, and men to get in line with them,” Jones explained.

“Alex Jones, he’s not crazy, he’s just early. He’s ahead of the curve,” Kirk said to close out the segment.

The previous day, Kirk had praised Jones as someone who was “not wrong a lot of the time,” even as he acknowledged that “he is not right a lot of the time.”

Elijah Schaffer, a reporter at The Blaze and host of Slightly Offens*ve, also interviewed Jones in August after the conclusion of his Sandy Hook defamation trial. Like Kirk and Bannon, Schaffer framed the discussion as a defense of free speech against those who are trying to “silence the truth.”

Failing Fox News competitor One America News Network interviewed Jones’ colleague Owen Shroyer, currently facing charges in the January 6 riot, following the conclusion of the Sandy Hook trial.

“We are increasingly seeing, you know, here at one American News, we haven't been banned quite as hard as you guys, but we got taken off FiOS with Verizon,” host Addison Smith said. “We got taken off Comcast TV, you know, you name it. And that's because for very similar reasons, we have a commitment to reporting the truth as we see it and reporting the facts as we see it.”

Shroyer responded by praising Alex Jones’ “almost prophetic-like foresight of geopolitical developments and political developments.”

The two continued their mutual admiration the following night, when Shroyer invited Smith on his show to discuss the Mar-a-Lago search.

A host at Newsmax, an OAN rival, defended Jones’ defamatory comments on the grounds that “this is America and you can say what you want.”

And it’s not just backwater, fledgling right-wing networks and podcasts that endorse Jones. His reach extends to the highest echelons of right-wing media. Reactionary podcast megastar Joe Rogan has long been a supporter of Jones, and the two appeared together on a stream of the bafflingly popular Timcast IRL. Hard-right politicians like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and, of course, Trump, are also long-time champions of him as well.

Still, there seems to have been a notable difference in the reaction to Jones over the last several weeks. When he was roundly deplatformed in 2018, many conservatives came to his defense on free speech grounds while at least nominally distancing themselves from his content and arguments. Following the Mar-a-Lago search and his liability in the Sandy Hook lawsuit, conservative pundits appear to be following his lead.

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