Tonight in Your Rights: 'An out-and-out plan of extortion'
Legal actions challenge Truth Social's "extortion" scheme, Trump's latest birthright order, and the probe of ex-CIA Director Brennan.
On Thursday, a federal judge will question the government’s explanations for withholding the Epstein files, and All Rise News plans to cover the hearing.
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From $400 million in private donations to a court-blocked East Wing ballroom to his billions of dollars in cryptocurrency schemes, Donald Trump’s second term has been filled with increasingly audacious money grabs and self-dealing.
Even by his standards, however, Truth Social’s gambit to charge $100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s “market-moving” posts is “profoundly corrupt,” a new lawsuit says.
Brought by a news organization and press freedom group, the federal lawsuit attacks the so-called “Truth API” program as an “out-and-out plan of extortion,” putting timely access to vital government information behind a sky-high paywall that’s out of reach for the press and public.
Former Jan. 6th prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Public Integrity Project, torched the program as “comically corrupt.”
“I don’t think any of us have seen this … kind of public corruption in the information sphere in American history,” Ballou told All Rise News.
Ballou said that it’s also a First Amendment issue, and his clients include the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept, a news organization that said it’s “unwilling and unable” to pay for Trump Media’s pricey product.
On Wednesday, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s chief of editorial Kirstin McCudden joined an All Rise News live-stream to discuss the case.
Look out for extended video interviews with McCudden and Ballou, and read the lawsuit here.
‘The sacred guarantee of the Citizenship Clause’
Civil rights groups returned to federal court to block Trump’s new birthright citizenship order, noting that the 14th Amendment stays the same no matter how many times Trump tries to overrule it by fiat.
“If the President issues 100 orders seeking to create new exceptions to the sacred guarantee of the Citizenship Clause, all 100 will be equally illegal,” the American Civil Liberties Union’s attorney Cody Wofsky wrote in the brief. “And nothing requires this Court to countenance the continued assault on this foundational constitutional principle or issue an endless string of EO-specific injunctions.”
Trump’s renewed push to ban certain types of birthright citizenship purports to cobble together a list of exceptions to the constitutional guarantee.
It instructs agencies not to recognize the children of “an alien enemy,” “a foreign government employee,” and alleged birth tourists, written with language that sweeps naturalized citizens in its reach, the rights groups warn.
“Indeed, standing alone the new order would appear to apply to people who have lived their entire lives as citizens, potentially going back generations; to children of permanent residents; and even to naturalized citizens (for example a naturalized citizen whose parent was employed by an embassy),” the motion states.
The case returns to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Joseph LaPlante, a George W. Bush appointee who issued the initial injunction that the Supreme Court upheld.
The ACLU, leading the civil rights coalition, said that an important principle is at stake.
“Birthright citizenship ‘is no light trifle to be jeopardized’ in such a cavalier manner,” the ACLU wrote in the motion. “‘The very nature of our free government’ refutes the notion that those ‘temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.’”
Read that motion here.
Ex-CIA Director Brennan pushes counteroffensive
Another person on Trump’s enemies list isn’t waiting for an indictment to protect his rights.
The target of at least two federal grand jury investigations, former CIA director John Brennan has been pursuing a lawsuit to order the government to preserve all evidence that will allow him to defend himself during potential prosecutions that he regards as “preordained” and “vindictive.”
“To ensure that he can effectively challenge any unconstitutionally vindictive and selective criminal charges, Director Brennan has sought injunctive relief ordering the government defendants to preserve the internal government records and communications that will demonstrate the retributive motivations behind an eventual prosecution,” Brennan’s attorney Ken Wainstein wrote on Tuesday.
Brennan notes that the lawsuit asks the government to do nothing more than fulfill its existing legal obligations, and his defense calls the Trump administration’s response telling.
“Rather than simply stipulating to uphold that constitutional obligation, however, the Defendants devote their responsive pleadings to arguing the limits of that obligation and disputing when and how Director Brennan has the right to enforce it,” the filing states. “This concentration on technical arguments only underscores the merits of Director Brennan’s concerns and reinforces the due process imperative behind his request for injunctive relief.”
Read the filing here.
Ex-SPLC employee indicted
The Trump Justice Department’s indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the nonprofit entity as the sole defendant — until now.
On Wednesday, the government unsealed an indictment that criminally charged one of the legendary civil rights group’s former employees: Heidi Beirich, the former director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project.
The superseding indictment follows a sensational New York Post article reporting that she had a romantic relationship with an informant.
In June, investigative journalist Phil Williams and I analyzed that article on Legal AF, which previewed this latest development. Our earlier conversation is embedded above.
Check out his analysis of the new indictment here.
Beirich’s arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 19.
You are the very best, Adam. Thank you for staying on top of the anti-corruption cases!
Thanks Adam for your hard work on keeping us all so well informed on all the news related to the litany of ongoing Trump case and for reporting it in a way that’s easy to understand.