Following a bombshell New York Times report that Don Jr. and Eric Trump will profit off a billion-dollar mining deal President Donald Trump signed with Kazakhstan, there has been much discussion of the family’s rampant corruption. Now, one person formerly in Trump’s orbit has bad news for the Trump boys, who likely expect their father's pardon should they ever face charges: they can still face prosecution, and face other more spiritual forms of punishment. This is according to lawyer George Conway, ex-husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway and former Republican turned Democratic congressional candidate, who on Tuesday asserted that the president’s sons’ Kazakhstan grift is “flat-out criminal.” When asked whether he thought any of those associated with the scheme — which in addition to Trump’s sons includes the sons of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — would “see the inside of a jail cell,” Conway shared his thoughts on the matter. “Some will,” he asserted. “Many federal offenses can be charged under state law, and many federal offenses involving activity in foreign nations can be prosecuted under foreign law. Trump's pardon power can't prevent these prosecutions. Also — many of these individuals will burn in Hell.”Conway posted this over an explanation of the Kazak deal from Representative Mike Levin (D-CA), who laid out the extent of the gift clearly.“The Trump administration cut a billion-dollar tungsten deal with Kazakhstan,” he explained. “Tungsten is the metal we need for missile warheads, fighter jets, and computer chips. Trump himself got on the phone to close it. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick worked it from the inside, sending letters, leaning on the Kazakh president, lining up as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing.” Then their sons got involved: “Within weeks of those negotiations, investors tied to a firm partly owned by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump took a 20 percent stake in an entity connected to the very same Kazakhstan project their father was negotiating. Around that same time, Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm run by Lutnick’s own sons, raised $210 million for a partner in the deal and pocketed the fees.”In other words, “The fathers set the policy. The sons cashed in. Six days after the Trump sons and their partners moved their money, Lutnick signed the final deal.” All told, there are nearly $9 billion in federal tax dollars going to these companies, noted Levin, saying, “This is the most corrupt administration in American history.”News of this corruption has prompted outrage even from those who are typically in Trump’s corner. On Tuesday, the New York Post — which usually reports in the president’s favor — said the deal “stinks to high heaven,” asserting that “the Lutnick and Trump boys have been sloshing around in the muck since their dads came to power 18 months ago. They’ve profited handsomely from cryptocurrency deals while the government their fathers control were setting crypto policy.” And on Wednesday, conservative media personality Megyn Kelly told an Australian news outlet, “I don’t feel great about our leaders, I’m not gonna lie. I’m disappointed with some aspects of the Trump presidency for sure, like the Iran war, that’s number one…it’s so grifty, I’m not gonna lie, it’s grifty. You know, the Trump family is grifty. There’s been like story after story about all the money his sons are making off of the government, these government contracts they’re getting, all that. I can’t stand that stuff.”
The Supreme Court gutted one of President Trump's signature policies, rejecting his effort to end birthright citizenship. Jan Crawford has more details.
The Supreme Court ruled correctly on birthright citizenship, but the vote revealed an outrageous conclusion from the dissenting justices, says Harvard Law Professor and Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Feldman. (Source: Bloomberg)
After the Supreme Court upheld the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, Trump and MAGA lost it. Trump threatened to get Congress to end the guarantee, which it can’t do, and he lamely claimed it was a “WIN” for China: The sheer haplessness of his response hinted at how disoriented the ruling left him. But MAGA exploded: One personality called on the masses to “use whatever force is necessary” to repel “invaders,” a clear threat of violence. Another one, flagged by Media Matters, accused the liberal justices of wanting to “burn the country to the ground” and suggested “men of action” must stop them, also a dark, veiled threat. And Stephen Miller absurdly described the ruling as “national self-obliteration,” which would seem to justify anything in response. We talked to Raul Pinto, deputy legal director of the American Immigration Council. We discuss why the ruling was too close for comfort, how that’s inviting MAGA to wage a longer war to overturn birthright citizenship, how that might unfold, and why there’s cause for cautious optimism about what’s next. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
President Trump suggested Tuesday that he would use Congress to end birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court ruled against his order to restrict the policy. “The Supreme Court upheld Birthright Citizenship, which is too bad for our Country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President,…
Today, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s Day One executive order canceling the right to birthright citizenship. Good. That executive order declared that children born in the U.S. would not be considered citizens if their parents were living in the country illegally or were visiting the country on temporary visas.The executive order never took effect. It was quickly blocked by multiple lower courts because it appeared to directly conflict with the 14th Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”The Trump regime appealed the lower-court rulings, contending that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship provision had been misunderstood for more than a century. The administration argued that the drafters of the amendment were focused on guaranteeing citizenship for the children of former slaves—and that the amendment was never intended to extend citizenship to the children of people who weren’t living in the country legally. Trump and his Solicitor General, who argued this case before the Court, also said that narrowing birthright citizenship was necessary to prevent “birth tourism”—the practice of immigrants coming to the U.S. to give birth here and obtain citizenship for their child.Trump has been vowing to try to change the law since entering politics in 2015, arguing the 14th Amendment was written specifically to enshrine the rights of freed slaves. His critics have countered that it was always designed to apply to the children of immigrants too. A 1898 Supreme Court decision confirmed that U.S.-born children of immigrant parents are entitled to American citizenship.Today, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the deeply-rooted understanding that virtually everyone born on American soil is automatically a U.S. citizen was enshrined in the Constitution with the passage of the 14th Amendment in in 1868: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.”In another era, this would have been a no-brainer. No constitutional lawyer I know thought the Court would decide otherwise. The lower federal courts had consistently and unanimously ruled against Trump. Had Trump won, it would have probably caused panic among recent immigrants and their families. Although Trump has insisted his policy would apply only to future births, it was far from clear that the logic of any win for Trump wouldn’t apply retrospectively if a future president (JD Vance? perish the thought) wanted to go there. What I find troubling is that the decision was 5 to 4 rather than unanimous or nearly so, as it should have been. Only five of the nine justice ruled against Trump on constitutional grounds. Brett Kavanaugh dissented on statutory grounds; while agreeing that Trump’s executive order was unlawful, he argued that the court should have resolved the case under federal immigration law rather than the Constitution. The Court’s three most conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito — dissented. Thomas wrote for the group: “The Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”Pure and utter claptrap.Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito are so far to the right of America that their views on this case and other matters should be presumed bonkers. Yet what’s particularly sobering is that Trump is only one justice away from having a Supreme Court majority that would have gone his way on this absurd reading of the 14th Amendment. Clearly, the Supreme Court must be changed — either by expanding the number of justices or by invoking term limits on Supreme Court justices. The Constitution would permit both remedies. Perhaps the best thing about today’s majority decision is that it’s such a direct repudiation of Tump, who has long taken a personal interest in the issue. During his 2024 campaign, he made curtailing birthright citizenship a key element of his immigration platform. When the high court heard arguments on the case in April, Trump took the unprecedented step of showing up in person for the hearing, making him the first sitting president ever to attend a Supreme Court argument. For the Court to so directly reject his position today is surely a humiliation for Trump. Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
