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The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is closely focused on phone calls and conversations among Donald Trumps children and top aides captured by a documentary film-maker weeks before the 2020 election, say sources familiar with the matter.

The calls among Trumps children and top aides took place at an invitation-only event at the Trump International hotel in Washington DC that took place the night of the first presidential debate on 29 September 2020, the sources said.

The select committee is interested in the calls, the sources said, since the footage is understood to show the former presidents children, including Donald Jr and Eric Trump, privately discussing strategies about the election at a crucial time in the presidential campaign.

House investigators first learned about the event, hosted by the Trump campaign, and the existence of the footage through British film-maker Alex Holder, who testified about what he and his crew recorded during a two-hour interview last week, the sources said.

The film-maker testified that he had recorded around seven hours of one-to-one interviews with Trump, then-vice president Mike Pence, Trumps adult children and Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, the sources said, as well as around 110 hours of footage from the campaign.

But one part of Holders testimony that particularly piqued the interest of the members of the select committee and chief investigative counsel Tim Heaphy was when he disclosed that he had managed to record discussions at the 29 September 2020 event.

The select committee is closely focused on the footage of the event in addition to the content of the one-on-one interviews with Trump and Ivanka because the discussions about strategies mirror similar conversations at that time by top Trump advisors.

On the night of the first presidential debate, Trumps top former strategist Steve Bannon said in an interview with HBOs The Circus that the outcome of the 2020 election would be decided at the state level and eventually at the congressional certification on January 6.

Theyre going to try and overturn this election with uncertified votes, Bannon said. Asked how he expects the election to end, Bannon said: Right before noon on the 20th, in a vote in the House, Trump will win the presidency.

The select committee believes that ideas such as Bannons were communicated to advisors to Donald Jr and his fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle, even before the 2020 election had taken place, the sources said leading House investigators to want to review the Trump hotel footage.

What appears to interest the panel is whether Trump and his children had planned to somehow stop the certification of the election on January 6 a potential violation of federal law and to force a contingent election if Trump lost as early as September.

The event was not open to the public, Holder is said to have testified, and the documentary film-maker was waved into the Trump hotel by Eric Trump. At some point after Holder caught the calls on tape, he is said to have been asked to leave by Donald Jr.

Among the conversations captured on film was Eric Trump on the phone to an unidentified person saying, according to one source familiar: Hopefully youre voting in Florida as opposed to the other state youve mentioned.

The phone call a clip of which was reviewed by the Guardian was one of several by some of the people closest to Trump that Holder memorialized in his film, titled Unprecedented, which is due to be released in a three-part series later this year on Discovery+.

Holder also testified to the select committee, the sources said, about the content of the interviews. Holder interviewed Trump in early December 2020 at the White House, and then twice a few months after the Capitol attack both at Mar-a-Lago and his Bedminster golf club.

The select committee found Holders testimony and material more explosive than they had expected, the sources said. Holder, for instance, showed the panel a discrepancy between Ivanka Trumps testimony to the panel and Holders camera.

In her interview in December 2020, the New York Times earlier reported, Ivanka said her father should continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted because people were questioning the sanctity of our elections.

That interview was recorded nine days after former attorney general William Barr told Trump there was no evidence of election fraud. But in her interview with the select committee, Ivanka said she had accepted what Barr had said.

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January 6 committee focuses on phone calls among Trumps children and aides weeks before election - The Guardian US

A conservative lawyer who aided former President Donald Trumps efforts to undo the 2020 election results and who has been repeatedly referenced in House hearings on the January 6assault on the Capitol said on Monday that federal agents seized his cellphone last week.

John Eastman said the agents took his phone as he left a restaurant last Wednesday evening, the same day law enforcement officials conducted similar activity around the country as part of broadening investigations into efforts by Trump allies to overturn the election results in an unsuccessful bid to keep the Republican president in power.

Eastman said the agents who approached him identified themselves as from the FBI but appeared to be serving a warrant on behalf of the justice departments office of inspector general, which he contends has no jurisdiction to investigate him since he has never worked for the department.

The action was disclosed in a filing in federal court in New Mexico in which Eastman challenges the legitimacy of the warrant, calling it overly broad, and asks that a court force the federal government to return his phone. The filing does not specify where exactly agents seized his phone, and a lawyer for Eastman did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Federal agents last week served a raft of subpoenas related to a scheme by Trump allies to put forward fake slates of electors in hopes of invalidating the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Also that day, agents searched the Virginia home of Jeffrey Clark, a Trump justice department official who encouraged Trumps challenges of the election results.

A spokeswoman for the inspector generals office declined to comment. Eastman, who last year resigned his position as a law professor at Chapman University, has been a central figure in the ongoing hearings by the House committee investigating the riot at the Capitol, though he has not been among the witnesses to testify.

The committee has heard testimony about how Eastman put forward a last-ditch, unorthodox proposal challenging the workings of the 130-year-old Electoral Count Act, which governs the process for tallying the election results in Congress.

The committee has heard testimony about how Eastman pushed for vice-president Mike Pence to deviate from his ceremonial role and halt the certification of the electoral votes, a step Pence had no legal power to take and refused to attempt.

Eastmans plan was to have the states send alternative slates of electors from states Trump was disputing, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

With competing slates for Trump or Biden, Pence would be forced to reject them, returning them to the states to sort it out, under the plan.

A lawyer for Pence, Greg Jacob, detailed for the committee at a hearing earlier this month how he had fended off Eastmans pressure. The panel played video showing Eastman repeatedly invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination while being interviewed by the committee.

Eastman later sought to be on the pardon list, according to an email he sent to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, shared by the committee.

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Feds seize phone of ex-Trump lawyer who aided effort to overturn election - The Guardian US

Nearly two years after losing the election, Donald Trump continues to collect money from his supporters.

Donald Trump never stopped raising funds from his supporters after the 2020 presidential race. His companies, meanwhile, continued to charge his political outfits for goods and services. As a result, the former president has been able to convert about $1.3 million of donor money into business revenue since he lost the 2020 election, according to a review of the latest federal filings.

In the months immediately following the election, much of the money came via Trumps official campaign committee, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. On December 1, 2020, the committee paid $38,000 in rent to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the entity through which the former president owns space inside Trump Tower. Fifteen days later, another $38,000 of rent moved from the campaign committee to that same LLC. The committee also made two payments of $3,000 at about the same time to an entity named Trump Restaurants LLC. The former president, who is worth an estimated $3 billion, also owns 100% of that company, according to an analysis of documents his business submitted to federal and local officials while he was president. Between the election and the end of 2020, Trumps campaign committee handed over $113,000 to Trumps business.

In the New Year, Trump didnt really shut down his campaign committee. Instead, he renamed it, turning it into the Make America Great Again PAC. Beginning on January 4, 2021, that PAC started funneling money to the Trump Organization, handing $8,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection by the end of the month. The group also wrote rent checks to the same entities that the campaign had been previously paying$38,000 to Trump Tower Commercial LLC every month or so and often another $3,000 to Trump Restaurants LLC. Its unclear why the Make America Great Again PAC still needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent in 2021, given that the election took place in 2020. Representatives of the PAC and the Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment. By the end of February 2022, the Make America Great Again PAC had paid $526,000 to Trumps companies, according to the review of Federal Election Commission filings.

Its unclear why the Make America Great Again PAC still needed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars of rent in 2021, given that the election took place in 2020.

While the campaign committee and its rebranded offshoot cut big rent checks, other Trump political groups splurged at the former presidents hotels. Nine days after the election, a joint-fundraising committee named Trump Victory, which gathered funds for the Trump campaign and several state-level Republican groups, paid $294,000 to the Trump Hotel Collection. Smaller sums followed. Trump Victory ended up spending more than $300,000 from the election to February 2021, when it last recorded paying a Trump property.

Other entities picked up the slack. In June 2021, a joint-fundraising committee that collects money for Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) paid Trumps hotels $22,000. Six months later, a different joint-fundraising committee handed Mar-a-Lago, Trumps Palm Beach club, $34,000.

Then there was Trumps leadership PAC, Save America. Leadership PACs often allow politicians to dole out money to other candidates they support. In Trumps case, the group also served as a vehicle for directing donor money into his business. From February 2021 to May 2022, Trumps leadership PAC spent $213,000 at Trump properties.

The Save America payments generated some press recently, as the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol took note of the groups operations. The former president told supporters that they could donate to something called the Official Election Defense Fund, even though that fund apparently didnt exist, according to the committee. Most of the money instead went to Save America, which in turn paid a small portion to Trumps business. Not only was there the Big Lie, concluded Repr. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California. There was the big rip off.

Read more from the original source:
Trump Moved More Than $1 Million From His Political Groups To His Private Business After Losing The Election - Forbes

Playgirl appeared to have run a competition where the winner could sleep with former President Donald Trump.

On Monday (27 June), @oldTrumpTweetz - the Twitter account dedicated to resharing interesting and bizarre moments from the former commander-in-chief - posted a few images from the 1990 Playgirl issue.

The first photo is of the magazine cover, and the others are of the Trump ads.

Hes rich, almost single and yours for the asking. Heres how [you can] get the Donald out of your dreams and into your bed, another photo read.

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According to a Snopes fact check in January 2020, Playgirl did run the Sleep with Donald Trump contest in 1990.

In the 1990s, Trump was in a messy and public divorce from his first wife, Ivana, which was displayed across New York tabloids.

With Ivanas claims of cruel and inhuman treatment at the hands of Trump, alongside other things, the former couple reached a divorce settlement that reportedly left her with anywhere from $14m to $25m.

Following the wildly talked about divorce, the August 1990 issue of Playgirl magazine teased readers with a cover blurb that said, Sleep with Donald Trump.

The publication intended to recreate the success of Playboy with a female audience.

Snopes further notes that the contest which was most likely a PR effort coordinated and paid for by Trump himself and/or a book publisher was actually little more than deceptive wordplay, which was complimentary of Trump.

Readers of the particular Playgirl issue also discovered that the prize to be won in the contest was a pillowcase with Trumps face silk-screened onto it. With the pillow, they could lie there whispering sweet nothings in his ear all night.

Elsewhere, Snopes added that there arent any records of the reactions of the winner if there happened to be any.

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Playgirl once ran a competition where the winner could sleep with Trump - indy100

Mr. Giulianis ex-wife Judith, who was with him at the time, told me that what gnawed at the former mayor most was a creeping fear of irrelevancy. (The couple divorced in 2019.) The flameout forced him to lower his sights from how to amass power to how to hold on to what he had left. When he offered a reporter a rare post-mortem on the race in 2009, he betrayed his concern. I think I shouldve fought Iowa harder, he told New York magazine. That was the beginning of becoming irrelevant.

After endorsing John McCain at the end of January, Mr. Giuliani disappeared from public view. Eager to escape the dreary cold of February in New York, he and his wife packed their bags and went to Florida to stay at her parents two-bedroom condo in Palm Beach, which Mr. Giuliani bought for them. They lived in Palm Beach Towers, an upscale high-rise apartment complex, with views of the crystalline blue Intracoastal Waterway, a swimming pool, landscaped gardens and nearby golf courses a natural place to relax after a brutal campaign. But he rarely left the apartment, spending his time sitting listlessly on his in-laws living room couch, sleeping late in the bedroom or smoking cigars in his bathrobe on the terrace facing a parking lot.

Ms. Giuliani said he refused to socialize or sit for meals, even as her mother, Joan, tried to entice him with his favorite dish, pasticcio. It started to really worry me because he was waking up only if I would wake him, she said. He became melancholy and self-pitying (You should leave me), she said. Her response You still have kids that love you, you have me, you have your health failed to assuage his sense of failure. He just could not get over it, she said.

She said he started to drink more heavily. While Mr. Giuliani was always fond of downing a scotch with his cigars, his friends never considered him a problem drinker. Ms. Giuliani felt he was drinking to dull the pain. The situation was concerning enough to send the couple searching for a more discreet locale for his recuperation, as the press caught on to their stay at Palm Beach Towers and photographers started popping up.

In search of a friend to turn to, they found one in Donald Trump. We moved into Mar-a-Lago and Donald kept our secret, Ms. Giuliani said.

Mr. Trump provided them with a hideaway that was secluded from the press and passers-by, a safe space for an ailing friend who was a magnet for photographers. He had a perfect spot for them a bungalow across the street from Mar-a-Lago. A small tunnel ran underneath South Ocean Boulevard, a narrow two-lane highway, allowing the Giulianis to walk to dinner beyond the glare of the press. He thought he was finished, she told me. His drinking accelerated, she said, the beginning of a series of episodes in which he fell and hurt himself. He was always falling shitfaced somewhere, she said.

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Opinion | The Bromance of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani - The New York Times