TV News LIES

The Justice Department agreement with President Donald Trump over his leaked tax returns includes a guarantee that the tax agency will no longer pursue any claims over tax liabilities it may have against Trump, his family members and his companies.

The nine-page settlement agreement made public by the Justice Department May 18, set up a $1.776 billion fund for "victims of lawfare and weaponization," did not include any mention of the government's efforts to go after Trump, his family and his companies over longstanding tax disputes.

On May 19, DOJ posted a separate one-page document on its website – signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche – with the new details. It includes what appears to be an all-inclusive release in which the Internal Revenue Service is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED” from “prosecuting or pursuing” any and all efforts to determine if Trump and the other parties are liable for non- or under-payment of taxes, interest, attorney’s fees or expenses incurred by the government.

Trump sued the IRS in January for $10 billion for a contractor leaking his returns, even though he had been promising since 2014 that he would release the returns to the public if he ran for president.

More...

A jury in California took less than two hours to decide that Elon Musk waited too long to file a lawsuit against his one-time business partner Sam Altman over the direction he's steered the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since the two had a falling out nearly a decade ago.

In a unanimous decision, the nine-member advisory jury said Musk was beyond the statute of limitations when he launched his case in 2024. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, agreed, tossing the case out.

"I've always said I would accept the jury's verdict," Gonzalez Rogers said after issuing her decision. "I think there's a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's finding."

The decision brings a swift end to a three-week trial that laid bare the fears and ambitions that led two of Silicon Valley's biggest personalities to team up 11 years ago to launch OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and then to part ways after a dispute over how to run it.

More...

The Pentagon is pushing back on allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is politicizing the military with his planned Monday appearance in Kentucky to campaign for the man who is challenging Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

“Secretary Hegseth is attending this event in his personal capacity,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement to The Hill. “No taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit. His participation has been thoroughly vetted and cleared by lawyers, including the Department of War Office of General Counsel, and does not violate the Hatch Act or any other applicable federal statute.”

Hegseth has been accused of potentially violating the Hatch Act in stumping for former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, the Trump-backed GOP candidate challenging Massie. Under federal law, executive branch employees — with the exception of the president and vice president — are limited in using government resources or their official titles for partisan political activity.

More..

A massive religious gathering on the National Mall backed by the White House is sparking backlash from critics who say it blurs the lines between church and state.

The unprecedented appearance of government officials featured virtual remarks from members of the administration including Vice President Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. President Trump also delivered a brief virtual message in which he read from the Old Testament.

The daylong prayer rally, pegged as part of the America 250 celebrations, comes as concerns mount about the administration’s push for more Christian prayer and religious symbols in schools and for faith-based organizations to get federal funding.

Some critics questioned the constitutionality of the event.

“Rededicate 250 is a betrayal of America’s founding values guaranteed in the First Amendment — which made clear that there shall be no establishment of religion by the government, and that each one of us should be free to live out our beliefs in our own way,” Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, said in a statement.

More...

With two days to go before the next big test of Donald Trump’s iron grip over his party, the president went head-to-head on Sunday with his nemesis, Thomas Massie the Kentucky congressman who is in a fight for his political life in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Over an eight-hour period starting in the early hours of Sunday, Trump took to his bully pulpit on Truth Social to taunt Massie, one of very few senior Republicans who has dared to defy him. Massie is the “worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country”, the rant began, followed by a mid-morning exhortation to Kentucky voters to “vote the bum out on Tuesday”.

Massie has been a consistent thorn in Trump’s side, voting against his signature tax and spending cuts bill, helping to force the justice department to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, and insisting on congressional oversight over the military actions in Venezuela and Iran. Now he faces a bruising primary against his Trump-endorsed challenger, Ed Gallrein.

More...

Even as Democratic officials fight the effort in court, the Trump administration has run millions of voter registrations through government databases to determine their eligibility in a process that critics worry could end up purging valid voters from the rolls before the November elections.

At least 67 million registrations, primarily from Republican-controlled states, have gone through a beefed-up verification program at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and tens of thousands of those have been flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died. Some states allow only a month for people to prove their eligibility and others suspend it immediately.

The scanning of state voter rolls at the national level is part of a broader effort by Republican President Donald Trump to federalize certain election functions and promote his messaging that elections are marred by noncitizen voting, even though instances of that are rare. Voting and civil rights advocates say the DHS system is error-prone and can mistakenly flag people who are eligible to vote.

“If a voter is wrongly removed, by the time they learn about it and correct it, they may miss their opportunity to vote in that election,” said Freda Levenson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio. The group is challenging an Ohio law requiring monthly checks with the DHS system.

More...