Will Trump stop using reelection money on legal bills?

Plus: Press-hating Harry and Meghan now fund local journalism

donald trump legal reelection funds
Donald Trump (Getty)
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Donald Trump is in the process of setting up the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, a fund to help pay off legal bills for him and his co-defendants in the four indictments he is facing, according to a report in the Messenger. Up until this point, the former president’s legal fees had been paid by his Save America super PAC. “Save America wasn’t really designed as a legal defense fund, so as the legal landscape evolved, so did this effort,” a Trump official told the site’s Marc Caputo.

So who can expect to be covered? Rudy Giuliani, presumably,…

Donald Trump is in the process of setting up the Patriot Legal Defense Fund, a fund to help pay off legal bills for him and his co-defendants in the four indictments he is facing, according to a report in the Messenger. Up until this point, the former president’s legal fees had been paid by his Save America super PAC. “Save America wasn’t really designed as a legal defense fund, so as the legal landscape evolved, so did this effort,” a Trump official told the site’s Marc Caputo.

So who can expect to be covered? Rudy Giuliani, presumably, who is named as a co-conspirator in Fani Willis’s Georgia case, and was the beneficiary of a Trump-hosted legal fundraiser at Bedminster last night. Giuliani’s fellow election attorney Jenna Ellis? Not so much: Ellis has switched her support to Ron DeSantis for 2024 and so has received no assistance from her former boss. Trump’s classified documents co-defendant Waltine Nauta seems like a likely candidate, as do other MAGAsphere figures who’ve toed the line since 2020: John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro, to rattle off a few names.

Will the fund cover the legal costs of the swathes of Capitol “rioters” and “sightseers” currently facing down the American legal system? Who, let’s face it, might not have made the trip to DC were it not for the urging of a certain president and his acolytes? Cockburn isn’t holding his breath…

Press-hating Harry and Meghan now fund local journalism

Fresh off suing Britain’s tabloid press, Prince Harry is joining a coalition that will spend over $500 million to remake local news in the US.

The move is perhaps unusual for the royal, given his lifelong disdain for the media, which he faults in part for the death of his mother, Princess Diana; he went so far as to accuse British tabloids of having “blood on their hands.” 

In an apparent shift, Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation is taking an “if you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em” approach, joining with others to, among other stated goals, “re-center local news as a force for community cohesion.”

The royals’ partners in this venture include liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund and the Knight Foundation, which funds, among countless other entities, the Global Disinformation Index, a body recently accused of covertly blacklisting conservative outlets. Perhaps not such a major departure for Haz then, given he’s previously described the First Amendment as “bonkers”…

Elon and Portnoy doubt Obama gay sex story

Twitter/X loudmouths are at it again — fighting over a gay crack addict.  

The trouble started Tuesday when Tucker Carlson teased an interview with convicted fraudster Larry Sinclair about his supposed sexual relations with Barack Obama in 1999. In the interview, which came out Wednesday, Sinclair claimed that he engaged in a night of cocaine-fueled oral sex with the former president who was, at the time, an Illinois senator. Not only that, but Sinclair said that Obama came to his hotel room the next day for more.

Carlson, who is clearly Team Sinclair, nodded along to the story looking more gleeful than ever, but others weren’t buying it. Elon Musk, on whose app the interview aired, said his claims “would have to rest on objective evidence.” Barstool Sports’s Dave Portnoy, a friend of Carlson, dismissed it outright. “I met Larry Sinclair when I was doing my Tucker thing a couple weeks ago,” the media mogul wrote. “I would trust Anna Delvey before I trusted anything Larry Sinclair said. Top to bottom maybe the least trustworthy human I’ve ever laid eyes on. I’d say his story has 0.0% [chance] of it being true and that’s generous.” 

Megyn ‘Money’ Kelly

Megyn Kelly is having quite the week. First she made headlines as she’s set to interview Donald Trump on her radio show on September 14. It will be their first meeting since the 2016 election cycle, during which Trump said that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” after clashing with her at the debate she moderated. The former president has thus far been shy about appearing anywhere he might be challenged, so this is a notable development.

SiriusXM, where Kelly’s show lives, quickly announced afterwards that Kelly had signed a multi-year contract to remain on the satellite provider through 2024 and beyond. Now it looks like Kelly may have money coming out of her wherever…