Tag: republicans

Turning Point leader pleads guilty to attempted election fraud

Former Republican state legislator Austin Smith pleaded guilty Monday to what he previously called “ludicrous” charges that he personally forged more than 100 signatures on his petitions for reelection last year. 

The Republican from Surprise was a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, which has a history of spreading false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and pushed for election law changes in the state legislature. 

“As a part of his guilty plea today, Smith admitted signing the name of a deceased woman on one of his candidate nomination petitions in March of 2024,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “He also admitted that he attempted to deceive the Secretary of State’s Office by knowingly filing petitions containing forged signatures of purported supporters of his nomination for the Republican primary for State Representative from LD 29.”

Smith pleaded guilty to one count of attempted fraudulent schemes and practices, an undesignated offense, and to one count of illegal signing of an election petition, a misdemeanor. 

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North Dakota court reverses judge’s ruling that legalized abortion

The North Dakota Supreme Court has reinstated the state’s abortion ban, overturning a previous ruling from a judge finding it unconstitutional.

The new decision makes it a felony crime to perform an abortion, with abortion providers facing as many as five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Patients are protected from prosecution, however.

North Dakota initially moved to ban abortion after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. This prompted the state’s one abortion provider, Red River Women’s Clinic, to move from Fargo to Moorhead, Minnesota.

The state passed a near-total ban in 2023, before it was struck down by State District Judge Bruce Romanick, ruling that it was unconstitutionally vague.

According to the North Dakota Constitution, at least four of the five justices to agree for a law to be deemed unconstitutional. Three justices believed that the law was vague on whether it was constitutional. The other two said that the law is not unconstitutional.

Justice Jerod Tufte wrote in his opinion that the natural rights granted by the state constitution do not extend to abortion, and that the law “provides adequate and fair warning to those attempting to comply.”

Those who opposed the higher court’s decision ironically called it “a devastating loss for pregnant North Dakotans.”

“As a majority of the Court found, this cruel and confusing ban is incomprehensible to physicians. The ban forces doctors to choose between providing care and going to prison,” Center for Reproductive Rights senior staff attorney Meetra Mehdizadeh said. “Abortion is healthcare, and North Dakotans deserve to be able to access this care without delay caused by confusion about what the law allows.”

Republicans praised the decision, however.

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An Intriguing Detail Emerges that Likely Explains the Exact Date Marjorie Taylor Greene has Chosen to Officially Resign from Congress

A fascinating detail has come into focus that almost certainly explains the exact timing of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation from Congress and raises questions about her true motivations for quitting.

As The Gateway Pundit’s Cassandra Macdonald reported, MTG declared in a stunning Friday night announcement that she is resigning from Congress effective January 5, 2026.

MTG posted a nearly 11-minute video and a four-page signed resignation letter to X, confirming the end of her five-year tenure representing Georgia’s 14th District.

The dramatic exit comes after Greene repeatedly demanded the immediate public release of the Jeffrey Epstein client list and files, which led to her being scolded and unendorsed by President Donald Trump in a series of posts to Truth Social.

“I’m going back to the people I love, to live life to the fullest as I always have, and look forward to a new path ahead. I will be resigning from office with my last day being January 5, 2026,” she said.

Following the news of MTG’s announcement, several Capitol Hill reporters noted that she timed her announcement JUST IN TIME for her to receive her federal pension.

Was it really just all about the money?

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Ex-GOP aide paid fetish artist to mutilate her, claimed it was an anti-Trump attack: court docs

A former New Jersey GOP aide allegedly paid a fetish artist to carve dozens of cuts in her skin and had a pal scrawl “Trump Whore” on her stomach in order to claim that she was the victim of a politically motivated violent attack, according to shocking new court documents.

Natalie Greene, 26, was arrested Wednesday and charged with concocting the violent bogus ambush at Egg Harbor Township Nature Reserve on July 23, the US Attorney’s Office for New Jersey announced.

Prosecutors said the accused fraudster claimed three gun-wielding men approached her and a friend on the trail around 10:30 p.m. before threatening to shoot her and hitting her in the head.

The suspect said the fictitious attackers then hogtied her with black zip ties, held her down while slashing her face and body, and etched anti-Trump slurs onto her stomach and back because she worked for a Republican, the complaint said.

Greene, a Maserati-driving Rutgers law student, worked for US Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), New Jersey Globe reported.

Local residents in Greene’s hometown were horrified when they heard about the story.

At the end of the day we’re talking about a 25-year-old girl, a beautiful girl, whose politics aren’t supposed to reach that level of extreme,” Fiona Tierney, 49, told The Post.

“Now she’s got to spend the rest of her life with these scars to remind her of what she did. What, she’s going to the beach wearing a bathing suit with all that on display? She’d never live this down. What kind of a future is that?”

Greene’s lawyer, Louis M. Barone, said his client is innocent until proven guilty — and that she was serving her community working for Van Drew’s office while also going to school time at the time of the alleged hoax attack.

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Former Aide to GOP Rep. Van Drew Charged for Faking Bizarre, Violent Political Attack

A former aide to GOP New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew was charged with faking a bizarre political attack.

26-year-old Natalie Greene and a co-conspirator faked an elaborate attack and claimed three men, one armed with a gun, hog-tied Greene, sliced her body and face and wrote ‘TRUMP WHORE’ on her stomach.

According to prosecutors, 26-year-old Natalie Greene hired a body modification artist to deliberately cut lacerations on her face and body

Greene was charged with one count of conspiracy to convey false statements and hoaxes and one count of making false statements to federal law enforcement.

She is facing up to 10 years in prison for the hoax.

Per the DOJ:

“Late at night on July 23, 2025, Greene’s co-conspirator called 911 and reported that she and Greene had been attacked by three men when they were out walking on a trail at a nature preserve in Egg Harbor Township,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said. “According to the co-conspirator, during the attack, the men had called Greene by name and had specifically referenced her employment with Federal Official 1, an official whose identity is known to the Government.”

“When law enforcement officers located Greene, she was lying in a wooded area just off the trail, with her hands and feet bound together with black zip ties. Greene’s shirt was pulled over her head and was also tied with a black zip tie,” the DOJ said. “Greene had numerous lacerations on her face, neck, upper chest, and shoulder.

The words ‘TRUMP WHORE’ were written on her stomach and the words ‘[Federal Official 1] IS RACIST’ were written on her back. Greene was crying and yelling that one of her alleged attackers had a gun.”

“Greene told police officers that one or more of the men who allegedly attacked her said he had a gun and threatened to shoot her. Greene also said that one or more of the attackers had held her down and restrained her movement, cutting her and writing on her body. A couple days later, after receiving medical treatment for her lacerations, Greene again described her alleged attack to law enforcement officers, including an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the DOJ said.

The investigation revealed that Greene had not, in fact, been attacked by three men at gunpoint on July 23. Instead, Greene had paid a body modification/scarification artist to deliberately cut the lacerations on her face, neck, upper chest, and shoulder, based on a pattern that she had provided beforehand.

Law enforcement officers recovered black zip ties in Greene’s car on the night of the alleged attack, similar to the zip ties that had been used to bind Greene’s arms and feet. Also, the investigation revealed that, two days prior to the alleged attack, the cellphone of Greene’s co-conspirator had been used to search “zip ties near me.”

The count of conspiracy has a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, and a term of 3 years of supervised release. The count of false statements also has a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, and a term of 3 years of supervised release.

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WHOA! GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna Reveals the Dirty Backroom Deal That Led House to Voting AGAINST Censuring Dem Rep. Stacey Plaskett for Colluding with Epstein

A Democrat got away with colluding with one of the most notorious p*dophiles in American history thanks to some good-old-fashioned backroom politics.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the House of Representatives on Tuesday evening voted against censuring Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.) over her collusion with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing.

Earlier Tuesday, the House voted to advance the measure to censure Plaskett and remove her from the House Intelligence Committee. Then, later that evening, the House voted 214 -209 against censuring Plaskett.

Every Democrat voted against the censure, while three Republicans voted present, and three other GOP lawmakers joined the Democrats.

Following the vote, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) exposed the nasty backroom deal cut by House leadership on both sides to ensure the vote would fail.

It turns out GOP leadership was desperate to avoid having Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) face not only a censure vote of his own but also an ethics investigation.

Mills is facing a restraining order for allegedly threatening to circulate explicit videos of his former girlfriend, Lindsey Langston.

Langston claimed in a petition filed in August that NBC News obtained that after they broke up, Mills said he would blackmail her by using nude images and videos. He also allegedly said he would physically harm anyone she dated.

“Cory continued to message me on Instagram accounts I run after blocking him and asking him to not contact me. The messages progressively got more threatening over time,” wrote Langston, a Republican state committeewoman and Miss United States 2024.

A judge granted her request last month.

“The Plaskett censure failed because house leadership exchanged that censure failure for the withdrawal of a vote to censure and refer Cory Mills to house ethics for investigation,” Luna wrote on X.

“The swamp protects itself.”

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GOP staffer found with Trump sex slur written on stomach and hands zip tied… before she’s accused of elaborate hoax

A GOP Congressman staffer was discovered crying and bound by zip ties inside a New Jersey nature reserve with the words ‘Trump wh—‘ written on her stomach and cuts across her face, neck, chest and shoulders. 

A frantic 911 call came in on the night of July 23 reporting that three men had attacked Natalie Greene, one allegedly brandishing a firearm and threatening to shoot her while mentioning her boss’s name. 

She said the attack took place after she received threats while working at the congressional office for New Jersey Republican Representative Jeff Van Drew.

But after the FBI questioned her, Greene’s elaborate story began to unravel, resulting in the young staffer being charged with making false statements after she was accused of faking the attack on herself. 

She had been found in tears with distinct-looking laceration marks all over her body, bound by her hands, feet and even around her neck with black zip ties. 

Greene told an FBI agent that two men grabbed her, pulled up her shirt and restrained her on the ground before tying her up. 

She claimed that one of the men struck her on the head before cutting into her body and ‘scraping’ her, with the pain so intense she began to scream.

The staffer added that one of her ‘attackers’ claimed he had a gun and threatened to shoot her if she moved, though Greene said she never saw the weapon and only felt something push against her stomach. 

That same night, however, police found extra, similar-looking black zip ties in Greene’s Maserati. 

Federal investigators later discovered that Green’s co-conspirator had googled ‘zip ties near me’ on a cell phone days prior. 

After seizing Greene’s cell phone, investigators then found a Reddit profile that followed pages that include ‘bodymods’ and ‘scarification.’

Elsewhere on her phone was a location map that took her from a Pennsylvania tattoo parlor/body modification artist and eventually to the nature preserve where she was found by police.

She also went to her co-conspirators home in Ventnor, a Dunkin Donuts in Atlantic City.

In the same town where Greene’s ally lived, they found a Dollar General Store that sold the same exact zip ties that had been used on her and found in her car.   

The markings, including the one calling her a slur and another saying ‘Van Drew racist,’ were found to be performed by the artist, who said Greene paid $500 in cash.

Greene, who had spent years as a constituent advocate director for Van Drew, took photos of the exact scars she wanted the artist to execute, complete with patterns for scars and cuts all over her face, neck, upper chest and shoulder. 

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Lone Member of Congress to Vote Against Epstein Files Release Says it Was a ‘Principled’ Decision

Few political issues, if any, have taken a life of its own quite like the files pertaining to disgraced financier and power broker Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein — a convicted pedophile and apparent mastermind of a horrific underage sex trafficking ring — had made quite a number of powerful friends.

People naturally wanted justice after Epstein seemingly killed himself in August 2019. But people also just wanted answers.

And that includes people of all political persuasions.

According to The Hill, a bill looking to unseal the Epstein files passed almost unanimously across Democratic and Republican lines.

Reps. Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna spearheaded the bill, which passed 427-1.

That lone dissenting vote belonged to Rep. Clay Higgins, a Republican from Louisiana.

And he explained his controversial decision on social media:

I have been a principled “NO” on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people – witnesses,…

“I have been a principled ‘NO’ on this bill from the beginning,” Higgins posted Tuesday. “What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America.

“As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people — witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.”

Higgins then doubled down on his “no” vote (emphasis his).

“If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt,” Higgins posted. “Not by my vote. The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case.

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Albany Republicans’ $20B shame: state spending madness is their fault, too

Albany Republicans, the minority in the state Senate and Assembly for the last seven years, face a long hike back to political relevance.

They can start by answering the $20 billion question.

That’s the difference between what New York state expects to spend this fiscal year — $148 billion, excluding federal aid and borrowing — and what it would be spending if the last budget enacted with GOP support, in 2018, had kept growing only at the rate of inflation.

That amount is $128 billion.

Republicans correctly note state spending is higher than ever — and, given Albany’s reliance on a small subset of high earners, rising unsustainably.

But they can’t put the blame on the Democrats alone.

The $20 billion question isn’t about what Republicans would cut if voters again entrusted them to steer the state.

It’s a deeper challenge: It asks them to explain, to themselves especially, how they can credibly claim to be the taxpayers’ champions when they not only supported much of this fiscal bulge, but pushed to make it worse.

Most of the budget growth since 2018 has been in just two programs: Medicaid and school aid.

Republicans supposedly concerned about the state’s fiscal picture have repeatedly agitated for higher spending on both.

New York spends $4,942 per resident (enrolled or not) on Medicaid, per Empire Center’s Bill Hammond. That’s 23% more than the next-highest state, Kentucky, and double what New Jersey spends.

A credible opposition party would be hammering Gov. Kathy Hochul on this, arguing that the program is pushing up taxes, crowding out essential services and often failing the vulnerable people it’s meant to help.

But the tiny group of upstate fiscal hawks making these points are undercut by their own Republican team: Sen. Pat Gallivan, ostensibly his conference’s health care point man, last year joined 1199 SEIU, the state’s largest health care union, to demand  “Medicaid equity,” a budget-busting increase in what the state pays hospitals and other providers.

New York’s GOP can’t even credibly levy its evergreen complaint about “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid.

The Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, a once-tiny initiative meant to help a small group of people live outside nursing homes, mushroomed into a $9 billion boondoggle that pays more than 400,000 people to care for 250,000 New Yorkers.

Republicans should have been first to sound the alarm on CDPAP — yet when Hochul proposed modest reforms by eliminating middlemen, they called her suggestion a “full-blown catastrophe” and all but ignored the fiscal hemorrhaging.

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Trump’s Republican Party insists there’s no affordability crisis and dismisses election losses

Almost two weeks after Republicans lost badly in elections in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia, many GOP leaders insist there is no problem with the party’s policies, its message or President Donald Trump’s leadership.

Trump says Democrats and the media are misleading voters who are concerned about high costs and the economy. Republican officials aiming to avoid another defeat in next fall’s midterms are encouraging candidates to embrace the president fully and talk more about his accomplishments.

Those are the major takeaways from a series of private conversations, briefings and official talking points involving major Republican decision-makers across Washington, including inside the White House, after their party’s losses Nov. 4. Their assessment highlights the extent to which the fate of the Republican Party is tied to Trump, a term-limited president who insists the economy under his watch has never been stronger.

That’s even as an increasing number of voters report a different reality in their lives.

But with few exceptions, the Trump lieutenants who lead the GOP’s political strategy have no desire to challenge his wishes or beliefs.

“Republicans are entering next year more unified behind President Trump than ever before,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Kiersten Pels said. “The party is fully aligned behind his America First agenda and the results he’s delivering for the American people. President Trump’s policies are popular, he drives turnout, and standing with him is the strongest path to victory.”

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