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Tag: Stephen Bannon

  • Trump’s Inner Circle Implodes: How McMahon and Rollins Tried to Oust Wiles

    Unsurprisingly, Duffy’s name had not been on the transition’s list of possible transportation secretaries. Lutnick had recommended a former senior executive at Uber named Emil Michael for the role, and Elon Musk had seconded that suggestion, believing Michael’s experience at a big tech company that had revolutionized urban transportation would make him an ideal candidate to shake up the federal agency. Trump, however, had never heard of the guy—and that made him a nonstarter.

    When Lutnick found out Trump was leaning toward Duffy for the role, he tried to shut the idea down. Making a case against him on the lack of merits wasn’t working—sir, the man has no relevant experience—so Lutnick tried to appeal to the president‑elect’s ego instead, tasking his team with searching through Duffy’s hundreds of television appearances to find any criticism of Trump. It took a while, as Duffy and his wife, Rachel, were unabashed Trump enthusiasts and had been for years. Lutnick’s team had to go back nearly a decade—to the early days of the 2016 Republican presidential primary—to find anything Duffy had said that was remotely negative about Donald Trump.

    Lutnick finally found a September 2015 interview in which the then‑congressman had said he didn’t believe Trump was a real conservative and didn’t think he would win the party’s nomination. But even back then, Duffy had praised Trump for “boldly speaking and saying things that the conservative wing wished that their leaders would say.”

    As weak as Lutnick’s effort to dig up dirt turned out to be, that one stray comment from almost ten years earlier nearly cost Duffy the job. Trump, reconsidering the pick, called Duffy and his wife, Rachel, and they were able to convince the president‑elect that Sean had long since changed his views on Trump’s conservative bona fides. On November 18, Trump made his decision final: “The husband of a wonderful woman, Rachel Campos‑Duffy, a STAR on Fox News, and the father of nine incredible children, Sean knows how important it is for families to be able to travel safely, and with peace of mind.”

    Excerpted from Retribution by Jonathan Karl. Copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Karl. Reprinted by permission of Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Group. All rights reserved.

    Jonathan Karl

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  • Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025 after conservative official calls for 2nd American Revolution

    Trump tries to distance himself from Project 2025 after conservative official calls for 2nd American Revolution

    MIAMI – Donald Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, a massive proposed overhaul of the federal government drafted by longtime allies and former officials in his administration, days after the head of the think tank responsible for the program suggested there would be a second American Revolution.

    “I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump posted on his social media website. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

    The 922-page plan outlines a dramatic expansion of presidential power and a plan to fire as many as 50,000 government workers to replace them with Trump loyalists. President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has worked to draw more attention to the agenda, particularly as Biden tries to keep fellow Democrats on board after his disastrous debate.

    “He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Biden said of Trump in a statement released by his campaign Saturday. “The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.”

    Trump has outlined his own plans to remake the government if he wins a second term, including staging the largest deportation operation in U.S. history and imposing tariffs on potentially all imports. His campaign has previously warned outside allies not to presume to speak for the former president and suggested their transition-in-waiting efforts were unhelpful.

    Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast Tuesday that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back.” Former U.S. Rep. Dave Brat of Virginia hosted the show for Bannon, who is serving a four-month prison term.

    “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” Roberts said.

    Those comments were widely circulated online and assailed by Biden’s campaign, which accused Trump and his allies of “dreaming of a violent revolution to destroy the very idea of America.”

    Some of the people involved in Project 2025 are former senior administration officials. The project’s director is Paul Dans, who served as chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management under Trump. Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt was featured in one of Project 2025’s videos.

    John McEntee, a former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump administration, is a senior adviser. McEntee told the conservative news site The Daily Wire earlier this year that Project 2025’s team would integrate a lot of its work with the campaign after the summer when Trump would announce his transition team.

    Trump’s comments on Project 2025 come before the Republican Party’s meetings this coming week to begin to draft its party platform.

    Project 2025 has been preparing its own 180-day agenda for the next administration that it plans to share privately, rather than as part of its public-facing book of priorities for a Republican president. A key Trump ally, Russ Vought, who contributed to Project 2025 and is drafting this final pillar, is also on the Republican National Committee’s platform writing committee.

    Project 2025 said in a statement it not tied to a specific candidate or campaign.

    “We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president,” it said. “But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement.”

    A Biden campaign spokesperson said Project 2025 staff members are also leading the Republican policy platform. “Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the hell out of the American people,” said Ammar Moussa.

    On Thursday, as the country celebrated Independence Day and Biden prepared for his television interview after his halting debate performance, the president’s campaign posted on X a shot from the dystopian TV drama “The Handmaid’s Tale” showing a group of women in the show’s red dresses and white hats standing in formation by a reflecting pool with a cross at the far end where the Washington Monument should be. The story revolves around women who are stripped of their identities and forced to give birth to children for other couples in a totalitarian regime.

    “Fourth of July under Trump’s Project 2025,” the post said.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

    Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

    Adriana Gomez Licon, Associated Press

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  • Trump Adviser Stephen Bannon Cites Podcast Duties as Reason He Should Not Be Required to Report to Prison

    Trump Adviser Stephen Bannon Cites Podcast Duties as Reason He Should Not Be Required to Report to Prison

    Days after being ordered to surrender by July 1 for a four-month prison sentence, longtime Trump adviser Stephen Bannon told Tucker Carlson: “In my 20s I served my country on a Navy destroyer, and in my 70s I’ll serve my country in a federal prison. It doesn’t make any difference to me. It won’t change my life in one way.” But apparently, it actually does matter to him, because last night he made a last-ditch attempt to stay out of the big house.

    In an emergency motion filed Tuesday, Bannon, who was sentenced to time behind bars for contempt of Congress, asked a federal appeals court to let him remain free while he appeals his criminal conviction. Why does he think the court should grant him such a reprieve? Because he’s trying to help reelect Donald Trump, and also because he has a podcast that his listeners simply cannot be deprived of. “The government seeks to imprison Mr. Bannon for the four-month period leading up to the November election, when millions of Americans look to him for information on important campaign issues,” attorney Trent McCotter wrote in the filing. “This would also effectively bar Mr. Bannon from serving as a meaningful advisor in the ongoing national campaign.”

    Bannon hosts a show called War Room, where, among other things, he has called for beheading top government officials and famously told listeners, on January 5, 2021, “We’re on the point of attack” and “All hell will break loose tomorrow.” In a text message to NBC News after a judge ordered him to surrender on July 1, he wrote: “Who says I’m reporting! WarRoom can not and will not be silenced.” He added that the show’s regular schedule would continue, saying: “4 hours a day 5 days a week and two on Saturday.… The WarRoom is a military command center for MAGA—can’t stop and won’t until we achieve final victory.”

    Bannon was actually sentenced to prison all the way back in 2022, but was allowed to remain free pending appeal of his conviction; last month, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court upheld his guilty conviction. Following that ruling, Judge Carl Nichols said the Trump adviser could no longer delay his time behind bars. In the emergency motion filed yesterday, Bannon asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overrule Nichols’s order. His lawyers have argued that he should not have to go to prison until all of his avenues for appealing his conviction—including the Supreme Court—have been exhausted.

    Bess Levin

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  • Facebook parent Meta will pay $725M to settle user data case

    Facebook parent Meta will pay $725M to settle user data case

    SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook’s corporate parent has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016.

    Terms of the settlement reached by Meta Platforms, the holding company for Facebook and Instagram, were disclosed in court documents filed late Thursday. It will still need to be approved by a judge in a San Francisco federal court hearing set for March.

    The case sprang from 2018 revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a firm with ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon, had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million users of the platform. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign that culminated in Trump’s election as the 45th president.

    Uproar over the revelations led to a contrite Zuckerberg being grilled by U.S. lawmakers during a high-profile congressional hearing and spurred calls for people to delete their Facebook accounts. Even though Facebook’s growth has stalled as more people connect and entertain themselves on rival services such as TikTok, the social network still boasts about 2 billion users worldwide, including nearly 200 million in the U.S. and Canada.

    The lawsuit, which had been seeking to be certified as a class action representing Facebook users, had asserted the privacy breach proved Facebook is a “data broker and surveillance firm,” as well as a social network.

    The two sides reached a temporary settlement agreement in August, just a few weeks before a Sept. 20 deadline for Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his long-time chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, to submit to depositions.

    The company based in Menlo Park, California, said in statement Friday it pursued a settlement because it was in the best interest of its community and shareholders.

    “Over the last three years we revamped our approach to privacy and implemented a comprehensive privacy program,” said spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby Luce. “We look forward to continuing to build services people love and trust with privacy at the forefront.”

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  • Colorado businessman set for retrial over border wall fund

    Colorado businessman set for retrial over border wall fund

    NEW YORK — A Colorado businessman returns to New York Monday for a retrial on charges that he cheated thousands of donors to a $25 million online crowdfunding “We Build The Wall” campaign to construct a wall along the southern U.S. border.

    Timothy Shea’s first trial ended in early June without a verdict when jurors informed the judge that continuing to deliberate would leave them “further entrenched in our opposing views.”

    The case once included as a defendant Steve Bannon, a onetime top adviser to former President Donald Trump. Trump pardoned Bannon just before leaving office last year. Two others charged in the case pleaded guilty.

    The deadlocked jury came days after 11 jurors sent a note to the judge claiming one juror was politically biased against the government and in favor of Shea after labeling the rest of them as liberals and complaining the trial should have been held in a southern state.

    Jury selection in the second trial begins Monday morning in a Manhattan federal court.

    Last month, Judge Analisa Torres rejected Shea’s request to move the trial to Colorado on the grounds that “political polarization” in New York and publicity about his first trial made it impossible for him to get a fair result in Manhattan.

    She wrote that a jury note in his first trial might have indicated that differences in political opinions affected the jury’s deliberations, but he had not shown that those differences reflected a prejudice against him. And she said he had not explained why “political polarization” would be less pronounced in Colorado or anywhere else.

    Shea, of Castle Rock, Colorado, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and falsification of records charges lodged against him after questions arose over how donations were spent from a campaign that raised about $25 million for a wall. Only a few miles of wall were built.

    Prosecutors said Shea and other fund organizers promised investors that all donations would fund a wall, but Shea and the others eventually pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars for themselves.

    Shea’s lawyers said he acted honorably in the fundraising campaign and did not commit a crime.

    Shea owns an energy drink company, Winning Energy, whose cans have featured a cartoon superhero image of Trump and claim to contain “12 oz. of liberal tears.”

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