A New York Times report on the developments added, “The White House did not immediately respond to a question on Wednesday about why Mr. Trump had pardoned someone who was prosecuted by his own administration.”

The underlying questions lingered, however, and The Wall Street Journal reported on the apparent answer:

Trump decided on the pardon after Republican former Rep. Trey Gowdy raised the case with him following a round of golf, according to people familiar with the matter. Leiweke had faced charges of rigging the bid for a $375 million basketball arena that was later built for the University of Texas. He had pleaded not guilty.

While the Journal’s report has not been independently verified by MS NOW, Gowdy, who became a Fox News host after stepping down from Congress in 2019, effectively confirmed the reporting, telling the paper on the record that he played a round of golf with the president on Nov. 16, at which point Trump asked Gowdy if there was anything he needed. The former Republican congressman brought up his client, Leiweke, arguing that he’d been treated unfairly.....

I continue to believe this is one of the most laughable claims Leavitt has ever made, and the circumstances surrounding the Leiweke pardon make clear that in this administration, “pardons” and “utmost seriousness” clearly do not belong in the same sentence.

The Journal’s report on this case noted that prosecutors from Trump’s own administration had granted immunity to Leiweke’s partners to focus specifically on Leiweke. Instead, thanks to the president, prosecutors are walking away empty-handed in “the only criminal case targeting how the live-events industry works.”

In fact, when reporters started checking out the records, they discovered that some members of the White House Cabinet had allegedly done the same thing Trump and Pulte accused their targets of doing.

This week, the allegations took on even greater significance when ProPublica reported that the president himself appears to have done the very thing he called “deceitful and potentially criminal.” From the report:

In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a ‘Bermuda style’ home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.

In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence. Instead, the two houses, which are next to his historic Mar-a-Lago estate, were used as investment properties and rented out, according to contemporaneous news accounts and an interview with his longtime real estate agent — exactly the sort of scenario his administration has pointed to as evidence of fraud.

Oops....

Trump, of course, is the first convicted felon ever to serve in the Oval Office, having been found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of the Republican’s hush money scandal.

As for whether the president regrets challenging journalists to “go check out” mortgage records to look for potential wrongdoing, the Republican has not yet commented on that aspect of the latest revelations. Watch this space.

At an Oval Office event on Saturday for those receiving this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, Donald Trump took some time to talk about his role in the event. “We never had a president hosting the awards before,” he noted, adding, “If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”,,,,

Except Trump doesn’t quite see it that way. On the contrary, the Republican, perhaps best known to much of the public as the host of a reality television game show before entering politics, apparently still wants to be seen less as a political leader and more as a star. The New York Times reported:

President Trump took the stage at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, making himself the face of an arts event he once shunned as he paid tribute to the actor Sylvester Stallone, the singer Gloria Gaynor and other artists.

While presidents typically attend the event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Trump is the first to host it, putting his administration’s cultural takeover of Washington and its institutions on vivid display.

The event was the culmination of a bizarre series of events. Trump appointed himself chair of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees earlier this year, and he started naming loyalists to leadership roles at the institution while purging its traditionally bipartisan board......

Politico’s Jonathan Martin noted last week, “Instead of focusing on governing, Trump spends his days chasing entertainment, attention and renovation projects that reflect a presidency stuck in adolescence.”

Watching the president enjoy himself as the emcee at the Kennedy Center Honors served as a reminder of the thesis’ accuracy.

As Congress prepared to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, the president published an item to his social media platform, trying anew to distance himself from the scandal. “Don’t waste your time with Trump,” he wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “I have a Country to run!”

Left unanswered was the obvious follow-up question: Since when does Trump try to run the country?

After federal law enforcement officials arrested Brian Cole Jr., the suspect in the Capitol Hill pipe-bombing case, FBI Director Kash Patel spoke at a press conference and appeared eager to boast about the developments.

Patel on J6 arrest: "When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation's Capitol, you attack the very being of our way of life."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-12-04T18:44:00.833Z

“When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation’s capital, you attack the very being of our way of life,” the bureau’s director declared. “And this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always refute it and combat it.”

Well, maybe not always.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but listening to Patel, it was hard not to think of the Jan. 6 rioters who also attacked “our institutions of legislation” and “our nation’s capital.” If memory serves, they were ultimately rewarded with pardons from Donald Trump — with the support of the president’s appointees at the FBI and the Justice Department.....

These sentiments should apply to Jan. 6, but as far as Team Trump is concerned, they don’t.

So while Patel appe

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling them “an imminent threat to the United States of America,” on Monday Pete Hegseth ordered a strike on seven boat passengers he accused of being “notorious drug traffickers.”

“I was watching late-night television and a program about these individuals came on,” the Secretary of War said. “I immediately hopped on Signal and ordered the attack.”

Hegseth said that, although the seven alleged narcoterrorists appear to be victims of a shipwreck, “That’s never stopped us before.”

“To the untrained eye, these persons might look like seven stranded castaways,” Hegseth continued. “In point of fact, they are all on a list of dangerous drug traffickers—a list I made myself with ChatGPT.”

“The passengers include a skipper, his first mate, and a so-called ‘professor’ who we believe runs a fentanyl lab,” he said. “Also onboard is the kingpin of a major Venezuelan cartel, who goes only by the name ‘El Millonario.’”

He urged the American people “not to be fooled” by the presence of three women on the vessel, including one wearing a full-length sequined gown and heavy makeup, noting, “I wear heavy makeup and there’s no one more badass.”

President Donald Trump lashed out at Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) on Sunday after learning that the lawmaker – whom he had pardoned this week following bribery and conspiracy charges – still plans to run for re-election as a Democrat, decrying it as “such a lack of loyalty.”

Cuellar, among the most right-wing Democratic lawmakers in Congress, and the only reliably anti-abortion Democrat in the House, was indicted in May of 2024 on charges for bribery, money laundering, acting as a foreign agent and conspiracy.

Prosecutors alleged that he and his wife accepted close to $600,000 from an oil company owned in part by the Eastern European country of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank in return for him advocating for legislation favorable to both entities. The payments were alleged to be laundered through sham consulting contracts and shell companies.....

Trump then went on to write how he learned that Cuellar had decided to run for re-election, and apparently to Trump’s surprise, as a Democrat.

“Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be ‘running’ for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas (a State where I received the highest number of votes ever recorded!), as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison - And probably still do!” Trump wrote.

“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”

On Friday morning, things continued their slide from bad to worse. MS NOW reported:

Without data to support their decision and defying warnings from doctors, medical associations and public health groups, a federal advisory panel stocked with loyalists to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has voted to stop recommending a life-saving vaccine to infants at birth.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop recommending the hepatitis B birth dose for infants — specifically those born to mothers who test negative for the virus — until they’re at least 2 months old, following a vote on Friday morning by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Eight panel members voted to stop the recommendation, with three dissenting.

....Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a former physician who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services, has raised related concerns. The day before the vote, the senator said online, “The ACIP is totally discredited. They are not protecting children.”

A day later, Cassidy published a follow-up online statement:

https://x.com/SenBillCassidy/status/1996974038413971766

.....The latter half of the quote, however, wasn’t quite right. Cassidy, in a position of real power and influence on Capitol Hill, has plenty of other options. He could concede publicly that confirming Kennedy was a tragic mistake; he could call for Kennedy’s resignation; he could even schedule hearings and haul officials from HHS, CDC and the FDA to Capitol Hill to demand answers and changes.

Cassidy isn’t doing any of these things. He’s instead publishing a couple of tweets, criticizing radical and dangerous public health moves in the mildest of ways.

I can’t ready the senator’s mind. Maybe he’s worried about the GOP primary challenge he’s facing in Louisiana next year? Maybe he’s letting partisan considerations hold him back? Maybe he’s under pressure from Republican leaders not to do anything more consequential?

Whatever his motivation, Cassidy can’t escape responsibility for the damage Kennedy and his cohorts are doing to the nation’s public health, and while he could take meaningful actions in response, the senator is choosing not to, seemingly indifferent to the consequences of his inaction.

Federal agents arrested a suspect Thursday morning, taking Brian Cole Jr. into custody. The Virginia man, who lives roughly 23 miles south of Capitol Hill, has been charged with transporting an explosive device and attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials, according to charging documents filed in court.

There’s no shortage of questions about the suspect and his actions, but some new details are coming to the fore. NBC News reported that Cole is cooperating with the FBI and has already shared important insights. From the report:

The man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican party headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol told the FBI he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, according to two people familiar with the matter.

This dovetails with a related account from MS NOW’s Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian, who reported that the suspect confessed to agents Thursday that he planted the bombs near the Capitol — and indicated he supported Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his interview.

These developments are obviously new, and as the investigation continues, officials will likely get a clearer sense of the suspect’s motivations.