TV News LIES

A private equity firm owned by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has been paid $157m in fees since 2021 without returning any profit to investors, according to a US Senate inquiry.

The finding from the Senate finance committee has fuelled suspicions that the Miami-based company, Affinity Partners, may be a foreign influence-buying operation established in anticipation of the former president returning to the White House.

The inquiry was launched by the Democrat-led Senate finance committee in response to reports in the New York Times that Kushner was pursuing property deals abroad as his father-in-law was embroiled in a presidential election campaign.

The paper reported that Kushner was using contacts cultivated while working as a White House adviser during Trump’s presidency.

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Special counsel Jack Smith can file an oversized, 180-page motion on presidential immunity in Donald Trump’s Washington DC federal court election interference case, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge Tanya S Chutkan’s decision stems from prosecutors’ 21 September request to exceed the typical 45-page limit for opening motions and oppositions. Smith’s motion must be filed by Thursday and will include both legal arguments and evidence and could provide additional insight into Trump’s efforts to throw out election results, though it is unclear when the public might be able to see the material given that it will initially be filed under seal.

Trump faces four felony counts over his effort to subvert the 2020 election, though a July US supreme court ruling on presidential immunity threw the case into near disarray.

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Days after a CNN report about racist and sexual comments posted on a pornography forum, all but a few of Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson's campaign team quit their jobs on Sunday.

A campaign news release said that four top staffers have left the campaign: Conrad Pogorzelski, general consultant and senior advisor who's worked for Robinson since his initial 2020 lieutenant governor campaign; Chris Rodriguez, campaign manager; Heather Whillier, finance director; and Jason Rizk, deputy campaign manager.

But WUNC has confirmed that other staffers have quit as well, leaving Robinson with just three people working on his campaign — two campaign spokesmen and a bodyguard. The list of departures also include longtime director of operations Patrick Riley and political directors John Kontoulas and Jackson Lohrer.

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An Arizona superior court judge rejected a challenge to a measure, Proposition 140, that would amend the state constitution and allow for open primaries in the Grand Canyon State.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Frank Moskowitz ruled on Thursday that the votes can be counted for the proposal, dubbed “Make Arizona Elections Fair Act,” that would permit all registered voters in the state to pick from all candidates in the primary election, no matter which party the candidate represents. After all of the votes in the race end up being counted, the top two vote-getters would proceed to the general election.

The measure has faced legal barriers from the right. The right-leaning Arizona Free Enterprise Club argued that nearly 40,000 of the proposition’s signatures were duplicates.

Moskowitz did not take up the evidence of duplicate signatures, but soon after, the state’s Supreme Court ordered the former Gov. Jan Brewer-appointed judge to settle if duplicates were involved, according to The Arizona Mirror. The Arizona Supreme Court also said in their ruling that if the proposition did not get enough signatures, the votes for it should not be counted. After being asked to reevaluate the order, Arizona’s highest court walked back the statement, The Mirror reported.

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Fourteen so-called fake electors who participated in former President Donald Trump’s 2020 scheme to throw the election results into chaos will once again serve as electors for Trump in 2024, including several who currently face criminal charges.

With input from the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, Republican state parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada have renominated 14 of the 84 fake electors from the 2020 election. Wisconsin's electors aren't publicly available until the first week of October, according to state election officials. A legal settlement bars unauthorized Wisconsin 2020 electors from serving as electors for Trump again.

There are no repeat electors from 2020 on this year’s Republican slates for Arizona and Georgia, the other two states where fake electors signed certificates incorrectly declaring Trump the winner.

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North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, Mark Robinson, referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” on a pornography website’s message board, according to a new CNN report about the current lieutenant governor who has already been marked by scandal and controversial comments.

According to CNN’s reporting, Robinson referred to himself as a “perv” in archived messages because he “enjoyed watching transgender pornography”. The messages were made between 2008 and 2012 on “Nude Africa”, a pornographic website that includes a message board.

He also expressed support for reinstating slavery. “Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it [slavery] back. I would certainly buy a few,” he wrote in October 2010.

In March 2012, during the Obama administration, he wrote: “I’d take Hitler over any of the shit that’s in Washington right now!”

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