JERUSALEM — The United States has welcomed the formation of a new Palestinian autonomy government, signaling it is accepting the revised Cabinet lineup as a step toward Palestinian political reform.
The Biden administration has called for “revitalizing” the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in hopes that it can also administer the Gaza Strip once the Israel-Hamas war ends. The war erupted nearly six months ago, triggered by an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
In a statement late Friday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the United States looks forward to working with the new group of ministers “to deliver on credible reforms.”
“A revitalized PA is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza and establishing the conditions for stability in the broader region,” Miller said.
The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It is headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has not faced an election in almost two decades.
The United States sees the Palestinian Authority as a key part of its preferred plans for post-war Gaza. But the authority has little popular support or legitimacy among Palestinians, with many viewing it as a subcontractor of the occupation because of its security cooperation with Israel in the West Bank.
Earlier this month, Abbas tapped Mohammad Mustafa, a U.S.-educated economist, as prime minister. On Thursday, Mustafa named his new lineup. It includes relatively unknown technocrats, but also Abbas’ interior minister and several members of the secular Fatah movement he leads. Several of the ministers are from Gaza, but it’s not clear if they are currently living there.
The Islamic militant group Hamas, a rival of Abbas, drove his security forces from Gaza in a 2007 takeover. The United States wants a reformed Palestinian Authority to return and administer Gaza, an idea that has been rejected by both Israel and Hamas.
A major challenge for the Palestinian Authority, should it be given a role in administering Gaza, will be reconstruction. Nearly six months of war has destroyed critical infrastructure including hospitals, schools and homes as well as roads, sewage systems and the electrical grid. Airstrikes and Israel’s ground offensive have left more than 32,000 Palestinians dead, according to local health authorities. The fighting has displaced over 80% of Gaza’s population and pushed hundreds of thousands to the brink of famine, the U.N. and international aid agencies say.
Israel has said it will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza and partner with Palestinians who are not affiliated with the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. It’s unclear who in Gaza would be willing to take on such a role.
Hamas has warned Palestinians in Gaza against cooperating with Israel to administer the territory, saying anyone who does will be treated as a collaborator, which is understood as a death threat. Hamas has rejected the formation of the new Palestinian government as illegitimate, calling instead for all Palestinian factions, including Fatah, to form a power-sharing government ahead of national elections, which have not taken place in 18 years.
Biden holds NYC fundraiser, Trump attends slain NYPD officer’s wake and more political stories – CBS News
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President Biden participated in a star-studded fundraiser in New York City with former Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in a show of support. Former President Donald Trump attended slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller’s wake on Long Island. Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez and Democratic strategist Joel Payne join CBS News to discuss their New York visits.
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How disinformation is reshaping political campaigns – CBS News
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The rampant growth of disinformation is creating an ever-evolving problem for politicians. A new book called “The Lie Detectives” seeks to understand the players fighting against the issue, and what they’re trying to teach political campaigns. Author Sasha Issenberg joins CBS News to explain.
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The relationship between Germany and Israel carries a unique historic and symbolic significance.
Berlin’s political leaders declare Israel’s security to be a “raison d’etre for the German republic”, said Politico. They even have a word for it: “Staatsräson“.
On a trip to Israel shortly after the 7 October Hamas attacks, the German chancellor Olaf Scholz made it clear. “German history and our responsibility arising from the Holocaust make it our duty to stand up for the existence and security of the State of Israel.”
A ‘special relationship’
The notion of a “special relationship” with Israel took hold in Germany in the 1970s. In recent years it has received “near-universal approval among Germany’s political class”, said Leandros Fischer in the Journal of Palestine Studies in 2019.
Parties from across the political spectrum have in effect “endorsed the consensus on Israel”, he said, banning, for example, any discussion of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
This relationship is driven by the “special responsibility” Germany feels it has to “the Jewish people, to Israel and to combatting anti-Semitism because it was responsible for the Holocaust”, said Al Jazeera.
This is reflected not only in the country’s strict criminal codes used to prevent the glorification of Nazi Germany, Holocaust denial and antisemitic hate speech, but in the rhetoric of its political leaders.
“We are in Germany, the country that practically annihilated Judaism in Europe,” Karin Prien, a politician from the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told The Guardian. “Eighty years on from the liberation of Auschwitz, we still bear a special responsibility to stand up against antisemitism.”
Free speech fissures
The 7 October Hamas attacks prompted a surge in both Islamophobia and antisemitism in Germany, mirroring a pattern seen across much of the Western world. According to RIAS, Germany’s Department for Research and Information on Antisemitism, reports of antisemitic threats increased by more than 300% in the month following the attack, said DW.
The response from the German state was to impose an “intense clampdown on freedom of expression” that included a ban on pro-Palestinian rallies and attacks on artists and academics by German politicians, said +972 Magazine, which describes itself as an independent, non-profit magazine run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
Speaking to The New Yorker, the artist Candice Breitz, who had her government funding pulled, said German politicians see it “as extremely risky to be connected with an event that had Palestinian speakers”.
In November a draft law was submitted to the German parliament that tied German citizenship to a formal commitment to “Israel’s right to exist”. A month later, the state of Saxony-Anhalt passed its own decree requiring those applying for German citizenship to recognise the State of Israel.
The German political elite has “justified its stance with the alleged feeling of guilt for the Holocaust and the need to make amends by supporting Israel”, said Denijal Jegic on Al Jazeera. Yet under this “cover of ‘acting morally'”, it has sought to “further normalise anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, justify more draconian anti-immigration policies, and downplay the persisting anti-Semitism among white Germans”.
Cult of guilt
Some argue Germany’s leaders are merely reflecting the position of their public, with polls showing support for Israel being higher among people in Germany than in many other European countries.
At the same time, debate around the role that shame plays in Germany’s foreign policy – especially in relation to Israel – has been intensified by the war in Gaza.
On a trip to Berlin last year, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan claimed that Germany was too absorbed by historical remorse to grasp the reality of the Middle East. It is a sentiment reflected by the far-right party AfD (Alternative for Deutschland), which has surged in the polls aided in part by its rejection of Germany’s culture of remembrance “as a mere Schuldkult (cult of guilt)”, said Joerg Lau in The Guardian.
“The idea that Germany suffers from an overdose of Vergangenheitsbewältigung – the German term for dealing with the Nazi past – is not new,” he said. But to believe the German political establishment is “captive to an oppressive mindset that limits its ability to speak out against Israel” is “a dangerous conspiracy theory that needs to be debunked”.
Instagram creators who frequently post about news and politics are urging their followers to allow “political content” in their feeds after the platform began automatically limiting such posts.
The Meta-owned platform had announced in February that it would stop recommending accounts that share political content to users who don’t already follow them. The app typically suggests posts and accounts based on the type of content a user engages with most.
As changes began quietly taking effect in recent weeks, users began noticing that the new feature had been set to “Limit” by default. That setting excludes content that is “likely to mention governments, elections, or social topics that affect a group of people and/or society at large” from the platform’s discovery mechanisms.
Some on the app expressed feeling blindsided that they were not directly notified of the setting change, only learning of it from other users.
Over the weekend, some creators started circulating instructions showing users how to manually toggle the option back by opening the “Settings and activity” menu at the top right corner of the app, navigating to “Content preferences” and finding the “Political content” tab. These settings also apply to the user’s Threads account.
“You can’t just essentially put a blindfold on people who may not realize it. A lot of people don’t even know that this is a thing that’s been applied to their preferences,” said Johanna Toruño, a street artist who frequently advocates for Palestinians on her Instagram account, where many of her more than 156,000 followers found through organic discovery. “It’s just so appalling to me to do something like this at such a political moment in our lives, not just internationally, but also within our country, with this being an election year.”
The move comes at a time when Instagram has emerged as a popular source of news and unfiltered updates around global and domestic political issues. A Pew Research Center study published in November found 16% of American adults regularly get their news from Instagram, which made up a bigger share of users’ news media diets than TikTok or X.
But ever since the launch of its text-based app Threads last year, Meta has made clear its intent to pivot away from promoting political content on its platforms.
Some creators circulated instructions showing users how to manually not “limit” political content by default.NBC News via Instagram
“This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted,” Dani Lever, a public affairs director at Meta, wrote in an email statement on Sunday. “And now, people are going to be able to control whether they would like to have these types of posts recommended to them.”
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has also reiterated that he doesn’t see Instagram or Threads as spaces for politics and news. Meta’s platforms have come under fire in previous years for being a source of unreliable political content, especially as generative AI makes the risk of viral misinformation more acute than ever.
“Politics and hard news are important, I don’t want to imply otherwise,” Mosseri wrote in a Threads post in July. “But my take is, from a platform’s perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.”
Political activists have previously accused Meta of potential bias against their content, and users grew particularly vocal about their suspicions in the months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
After some celebrities and influencers accused the platform in October of “shadow banning,” or essentially censoring, their content in support of Palestinians, a Meta spokesperson released a statement about a global bug affecting the reach of Instagram stories that reshared reels and posts.
Around the same time, the company apologized for “inappropriate Arabic translations” that resulted in Instagram inaccurately adding “Palestinian terrorists” to the English translation of certain descriptors in users’ bios.
Later that month, Meta locked several large pro-Palestinian Instagram accounts, saying that its security staff had detected a possible hacking attempt.
Instagram’s latest app change is reminiscent of another feature the platform added in December, in which users automatically saw less fact-checked content in their feed unless they changed the setting. Its quiet rollout had provoked similar outrage, causing pro-Palestinian accounts to air suspicions that Instagram was censoring their content by default. (It’s not clear if pro-Palestinian posts are fact-checked more often than other posts.)
Samira Mohyeddin, a Canadian-based journalist, said that a few weeks ago, she began noticing that all the historians and political commentators that usually appeared in her Instagram recommendations were suddenly replaced with videos of cats and influencer couples.
“As much as we like to pooh-pooh on social media and say it’s a cesspool and all this stuff, it’s still a vital source of news and information for a lot of people around the world,” said Mohyeddin, who shared her own post about how to change the setting.
News influencer and attorney Katie Grossbard said she worries that Instagram’s new limits on political content will keep users from staying updated on issues related to the U.S. presidential election.
“What’s kind of complicated about this news is, what’s defined as political? Because I’m like, everything is political. Our lives are political,” Grossbard said. “This decision directly harms communities whose entire existence is political. And is there a difference between posting content about nonpartisan election dates, versus posting about a court case that impacts reproductive freedom versus posting a slideshow about trans history?”
But this ease of access to bite-size information has also made social media platforms prone to spreading unchecked disinformation. Ahead of the 2020 election, Meta (then Facebook) removed 50 Instagram accounts linked to a Russian-backed influence campaign. And now, with the rapidly advancing abilities of generative AI, deepfaked images and videos pose a growing risk of infiltrating the information ecosystem.
As attention spans get shorter, Grossbard said, many voters are increasingly turning to sharable Instagram infographics rather than taking the time to watch cable news or read a lengthy article.
“While we can all try to make it better and maybe get media literacy in schools, where we are right now is where we are right now,” she said. “I think especially in an election year, we have to meet people where they are so that they can feel educated and empowered and they want to engage.”
3 North Koreans tell BBC News they are starving and afraid following sealing of border
04:23
Seoul, South Korea — North Korea hurled misogynistic insults Wednesday at a newly confirmed United States special envoy to monitor the country’s human rights issues and warned of unspecified security consequences if Washington continues to criticize its human rights conditions.
The statement published by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency described Julie Turner as a “wicked woman” who was picked by the Biden administration as a “political housemaid” to launch groundless attacks on the country’s human rights record.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Turner’s appointment July 27. She previously served as the director of East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department.
The statement said the Biden administration’s public criticism of North Korea’s human rights situation highlighted its hostility toward Pyongyang in the face of an intensifying nuclear standoff between the countries. KCNA described Turner’s past criticisms of North Korea’s human rights record as absurd and said the U.S. “revels in meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and slandering it.”
“Turner should know that she was chosen as a political housemaid and scapegoat for the ‘human rights’ plots to pressure the DPRK, a poor policy set forth by the Biden administration driven into a scrape in the DPRK-U.S. nuclear confrontation,” the agency said, using the initials of the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The agency said the continued U.S. criticism on North Korean human rights issues could “backfire on it, spawning severe security issues.”
In defiance of Washington last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hosted senior delegates from Russia and China at a Pyongyang military parade that showcased his intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to target the U.S. mainland. Analysts say Kim is trying to boost the visibility of his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing as he looks to break away from diplomatic isolation and insert himself into a united front against the United States.
North Korea marks 70 years since Korean War armistice with delegations from Russia, China
02:51
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years. The pace of North Korean missile tests and the United States’ combined military exercises with South Korea have intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle.
North Korea is sensitive to any criticism of its top leadership and government, and often issues harsh remarks toward U.S. and South Korean officials in times of animosity. The country’s language tends to be cruder when the targets are women: It called former South Korean President Park Geun-hye a prostitute and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a “funny lady” who sometimes “looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”
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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea hurled misogynistic insults Wednesday at a newly confirmed United States special envoy to monitor the country’s human rights issues and warned of unspecified security consequences if Washington continues to criticize its human rights conditions.
The statement published by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency described Julie Turner as a “wicked woman” who was picked by the Biden administration as a “political housemaid” to launch groundless attacks on the country’s human rights record.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Turner’s appointment July 27. She previously served as the director of East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department.
The statement said the Biden administration’s public criticism of North Korea’s human rights situation highlighted its hostility toward Pyongyang in the face of an intensifying nuclear standoff between the countries. KCNA described Turner’s past criticisms of North Korea’s human rights record as absurd, and said the U.S. “revels in meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and slandering it.”
“Turner should know that she was chosen as a political housemaid and scapegoat for the ‘human rights’ plots to pressure the DPRK, a poor policy set forth by the Biden administration driven into a scrape in the DPRK-U.S. nuclear confrontation,” the agency said, using the initials of the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The agency said the continued U.S. criticism on North Korean human rights issues could “backfire on it, spawning severe security issues.”
In defiance of Washington last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hosted senior delegates from Russia and China at a Pyongyang military parade that showcased his intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to target the U.S. mainland. Analysts say Kim is trying to boost the visibility of his partnerships with Moscow and Beijing as he looks to break away from diplomatic isolation and insert himself into a united front against the United States.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest point in years. The pace of North Korean missile tests and the United States’ combined military exercises with South Korea have intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle.
North Korea is sensitive to any criticism of its top leadership and government, and often issues harsh remarks toward U.S. and South Korean officials in times of animosity. The country’s language tends to be cruder when the targets are women: It called former South Korean President Park Geun-hye a prostitute, and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a “funny lady” who sometimes “looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping.”
Fitch Ratings has downgraded U.S. credit from the highest rating, citing the nation’s growing debt and its eroding political stability.
“In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters,” the ratings agency said Tuesday. “The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management.”
The ratings agency also cited the U.S.’ “complex budgeting process” and its lack of a medium-term financial planning, relative to its peers, in explaining the downgrade to AA+, from the U.S.’ previous AAA level. These factors, combined with the fiscal shocks from the pandemic, new spending and tax cuts, have brought the debt to 113% of the national economic output, well above pre-pandemic levels.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen decried the new rating, calling it “arbitrary and based on outdated data.”
“Fitch’s decision does not change what Americans, investors and people all around the world already know: that Treasury securities remain the world’s preeminent safe and liquid asset, and that the American economy is fundamentally strong,” she said in a statement that touted the U.S.’ economic recovery from the coronavirus recession and the administration’s plans to reduce the budget deficit.
Reduced credit ratings could lead the U.S. to pay higher interest rates on Treasury notes, bills and bonds, according to the Associated Press.
“We strongly disagree with this decision,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “The ratings model used by Fitch declined under President Trump and then improved under President Biden, and it defies reality to downgrade the United States at a moment when President Biden has delivered the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world.”
Where Biden’s economic approval stands, according to CBS News polling
03:32
The U.S. last faced a debt downgrade in 2011, when Standard & Poor’s cut the nation’s rating one notch after prolonged wrangling in Congress brought the U.S. close to default.
Despite the downgrade, Fitch noted several positives the U.S. has going for it, including “its large, advanced, well-diversified and high-income economy, supported by a dynamic business environment” and the U.S. dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, “which gives the government extraordinary financing flexibility,” the ratings firm said.
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s legal woes may not be eating into his lead among GOP primary voters, but they’re costing his political operation millions of dollars.
Trump’s Save America PAC has spent more than $20 million on legal fees alone — doling out payments to more than 40 different law firms — in the first six months of 2023, according to new campaign finance reports filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission.
Legal expenditures accounted for two-thirds of the PAC’s total spending from January through June.
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The PAC has been covering Trump’s legal expenses and those of his associates who have been drawn into the multiple investigations probing Trump’s conduct in and out of office. Trump is the focus of investigations into the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and he’s been indicted over his handling of classified documents and hush money payments from when he was a presidential candidate in 2016.
Not all of the legal spending likely went to those investigations — candidates and political action committees have other needs too — but Trump’s PAC has been paying lawyers representing people involved in these investigations for some time.
The legal bills piled up for the PAC, which clawed back more than $12 million it had previously given to an allied super PAC to help cover the costs.
And that spending has made a significant dent in the group’s bottom line — while it started the year with more than $18 million banked away, it ended June with less than $4 million in cash on hand.
Save America is an entirely different group than the ones directly funding his presidential campaign. Trump typically fundraises for the two groups in tandem, sending the vast majority of dollars raised directly to his presidential campaign and a small portion to Save America.
But the massive spending shows both the financial and political toll Trump’s legal woes are taking on his orbit.
Ahead of Trump’s announcement in late 2022 that he was running for president again, Save America gave tens of millions from what it had raised during the post-presidency period to a super PAC, MAGA Inc., to help immediately fill the outside group’s coffers so it could begin spending to boost Trump. That cash infusion has helped MAGA Inc. become one of the top ad spenders in the presidential race.
But the new fundraising reports filed Monday show that MAGA Inc. ultimately gave back more than $12 million in four payments in May and June. The New York Times reported Saturday that Save America explicitly requested a refund.
Trump super PAC still spends millions
That transfer to Save America accounted for roughly one-third of MAGA Inc.’s spending over the first six months of the year, according to the super PAC’s campaign finance report. Much of the group’s other spending — $22 million — went to TV ad buys in support of Trump’s candidacy. The group also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling, fundraising, events and research.
MAGA Inc. spent more than it raised in the first six months of the year, raising over $14.6 million. But the super PAC also had plenty to spend on boosting Trump, reporting $30.8 million in its campaign account as of June 30.
The super PAC’s top donor over the first six months of 2023 was Patricia Duggan of Clearwater, Fla., a prominent Scientologist who gave the group $5 million. Casino magnate Phil Ruffin gave $2 million; Woody Johnson, chairman of the New York Jets and U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom during the Trump administration, gave $1 million; and Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, also gave $1 million. Trump pardoned Charles Kushner at the end of his term.
One other donor of note: Bernie Moreno, a Republican who is running for Senate in Ohio again and whom Trump praised on social media but stopped short of fully endorsing.
Pro-DeSantis group stockpiles cash
While the pro-Trump super PAC spent more than it took in during the first six months of the year, the super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has continued to stockpile cash for the primary fight.
Never Back Down reported more than $96.8 million in its campaign account as of June 30 — roughly three times the $30.8 million that MAGA Inc. had on hand at the same time.
The filings showed the bulk of the money Never Back Down raised, $82.5 million, came from one source: DeSantis’ Florida political committee. Monday’s filing is the first time that transfer has been publicly disclosed, although it had been previously reported by news outlets.
Two individuals who have given to DeSantis world before were the committee’s largest donors: Robert Bigelow and Stefan Brodie. Bigelow gave over $20 million to Never Back Down and previously donated to DeSantis’ gubernatorial re-election campaign. Brodie gave money to help fund DeSantis’ inauguration to a second term and gave $2 million to Never Back Down.
Venture capitalist Doug Leone also gave $2 million to the group. Leone was formerly a Trump supporter, but publicly renounced support for the former president following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, founders of the shipping supply company Uline and major conservative donors, each gave $1 million to Never Back Down.
The group reported spending nearly $33.8 million in the first six months of the year, including roughly $10 million on media and more than $4 million on an expansive canvassing operation.
Outside groups try to boost lower-tier candidates
Outside groups backing other candidates also filed finance reports Monday, with a group supporting South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott — Trust in the Mission PAC — bringing in over $19 million, and a group backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — SFA Fund Inc. — bringing in $18.7 million, far more than groups backing other candidates.
Trust in the Mission notably received $25,000 from one of Scott’s former colleagues — Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican who retired from the Senate earlier this year.
Best of America PAC, a group backing North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s presidential bid, hauled over $11 million, with $2 million coming from one of Burgum’s family members.
A group backing former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — America Strong and Free Action — raised $2.3 million, with $1 million of that coming from Warren Stephens, a Little Rock-based billionaire who has previously given to Republican groups.
But the group spent more than half of that, mainly on digital marketing and polling, even as Hutchinson has struggled to climb above 1% in polls of the Republican field.
Ben Kamisar
Ben Kamisar is a deputy political editor in NBC’s Political Unit.
Bridget Bowman
Bridget Bowman is a deputy editor for NBC’s Political Unit.
Alexandra Marquez
Alexandra Marquez is a researcher for the political unit.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump ‘s mounting legal woes are growing more expensive, leading his campaign to request a refund from a supportive super PAC and launch a new legal defense fund to help cover costs.
His political action committee, Save America, is expected to disclose Monday that it spent more than $40 million on legal fees during the first half of the year for costs related to defending the former president, his aides and other allies, according to a person familiar with the filing who spoke on the condition of anonymity before the deadline. The number was first reported by The Washington Post.
At the same time, Trump’s allies are creating a new legal defense fund that will help pay the soaring legal fees as Trump faces dozens of criminal charges stemming from indictments in New York and Florida, with more expected as soon as this week. The Patriot Legal Defense Fund, as it is called, is intended to raise money to defray costs for those “defending against legal actions arising from an individual or group’s participation in the political process,” according to a filing made last month with the IRS. The group will be run by Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Michael Glassner.
“The weaponized Department of Justice and the deranged Jack Smith have targeted innocent Americans associated with President Trump,” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung. “In order to combat these heinous actions by Joe Biden’s cronies and to protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense fund will help pay for their legal fees.” The fund was first reported by The New York Times.
Smith is the special counsel leading the federal investigations of Trump. His team has expressed interest in the payment of legal fees for Trump-aligned witnesses in the investigations and has sought information about it, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss ongoing criminal probes.
Trump’s PAC has also requested that his super PAC, MAGA Inc., return some of the money that it transferred to seed the group to help cover costs. It is unclear whether money was actually transferred or how much.
A spokesman for the super PAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump launched his PAC, Save America, in the days after the 2020 election, which he lost to President Joe Biden. For weeks, the group bombarded supporters with a nonstop stream of text messages and emails that purported to raise money for an “election defense fund” that would be used to contest the election’s outcome.
But the $170 million that the effort raised in less than a month was not used to contest the election, records show. Instead, it was used to pay down campaign debt and replenish the coffers of the Republican National Committee, with Trump also stockpiling another large chunk for his future political endeavors. Last year, the Justice Department issued a round of grand jury subpoenas that sought information about the political action committee’s fundraising practices.
Since then, Save America has served as a different sort of “defense fund,” covering the legal expenses for Trump operatives, allies and employees who have been ensnared in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation.
Some of Save America’s money has been used to boost other candidates, though it’s a pittance compared to how much Trump has spent on ballooning legal costs.
As the 2022 midterm elections approached, Trump pledged to back congressional candidates loyal to him. But of the roughly $65 million earmarked by Save America for political spending, less than a third — about $20 million — was used to back midterm candidates through campaign contributions or paid advertising.
“Forty million dollars — I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Paul S. Ryan, a longtime campaign finance attorney in Washington, referring to the sum the group spent on legal fees this year. “There’s no legal issue. It’s really just a question for his donors: Do they want to be funding lawyers?”
