Dead lawyer

Lawyer. Aggie. Co-creator of 2 humans.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Donald Trump told you the ballroom would not cost taxpayers a dime. He told you donors were covering it. He even claimed the builders offered to do it for free.

None of that was true.

New reporting shows the White House secretly handed out a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million.

They routed the deal through the Executive Residence office, the one that normally buys White House furniture and art, because it is exempt from the competitive bidding rules every other federal agency has to follow. They even claimed disclosing the project would compromise national security.

The cost estimate has already tripled, from $200 million to $600 million, with half of it landing on taxpayers. The contractor stands to clear tens of millions in profit.

A federal judge already ruled the president has no authority to demolish the East Wing and build this thing. He is doing it anyway.

This is your money, spent in secret, on a vanity project, with the rules deliberately dodged.

More corruption, plain and simple.

https://t.co/ESgm65Trde

[The Green Dragon Tavern @greendragonhq]

🚨Corruption 🚨

We have never seen anyone insider trade this egregiously. Donald Trump MUST be investigated.

In February Trump bought $5 million dollars worth of Axon Enterprise stock. Just days later, ICE awards them a massive government contract.

This is not a one of situation. It has happened dozens of times.

• Axon Enterprise (AXON): Purchased $1M–$5M on Feb. 10, 2026. Two weeks later (Feb. 24), ICE sought a $220M, five-year contract for ~17,800 Tasers (matching Axon’s products).

• Nvidia (NVDA): Multiple purchases, including $500K–$1M on Jan. 6, 2026 (and more around Feb. 10). Preceded Commerce Dept. actions loosening export controls on advanced AI chips to China and a major Meta deal.

• Palantir (PLTR): Nine+ transactions (hundreds of thousands of dollars) in Q1 2026. The company holds major Pentagon contracts (including expansions tied to ~$1.3B AI/defense work). Trump publicly praised it on Truth Social in April (mentioning the ticker), after which the stock recovered.

• Intel (INTC): Multiple purchases in March 2026. Benefited from U.S. chip manufacturing policies and government involvement/stakes.

• Defense Contractors (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics): Purchases in Q1, ahead of/around escalated Iran-related military activity and increased defense spending/production pushes.

• Eli Lilly (LLY): Up to ~$730K in purchases. Coincided with favorable government decisions/policies benefiting GLP-1/weight-loss drugs.

• Tech Giants (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, Broadcom, Apple, AMD, etc.): Frequent/high-volume trades around policy shifts, AI/tech initiatives, and government contracts.

• Dell Technologies (DELL): $1M–$5M purchase on Feb. 10, 2026. Nine days later (Feb. 19), Trump publicly endorsed Dell (“go out and buy a Dell computer”). The company later secured major government contracts.

Additional Context: Trump’s accounts executed 3,642+ transactions (hundreds of millions in value) in Q1 2026. Reports also note activity ahead of broader economic announcements (e.g., tariffs, Iran-related decisions).

[Steve Rattner @SteveRattner]

The number of financial side deals the Trump family is running is so shocking it can sometimes be hard to track.

According to @Reuters, their crypto ventures alone have delivered $2.3 billion to Trump & co. while creating a similar-sized loss for investors.

[InfoGram @_InfoGram_]

🇺🇸 Donald Trump purchased $5 million of Axon stock days before ICE awarded a $220 million Taser contract.

In any functioning democracy, this would be called massive corruption and He would have faced at least 2 years in jail.

[Rep. Mike Levin @RepMikeLevin]

Let’s be clear about what the Trump Administration just tried to do.

Trump’s Justice Department issued subpoenas to force reporters from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal to testify under oath before a grand jury. Not because those reporters did anything wrong, but because they reported the truth about this Administration. Trump wanted to know who talked.

One of those reporters, Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post, covers Trump’s intelligence officials and the Iran war. Both outlets fought back in court, and the government backed down.

This Administration has also raided a reporter’s home, threatened to revoke TV stations’ broadcast licenses over coverage it didn’t like, and made it easier to secretly search journalists’ phone records. This is not a president who believes in accountability. It is a president who is trying to make sure no one can report on what he’s doing.

A free press exists to hold power accountable. That is precisely why this Administration keeps trying to undermine it.
https://t.co/ZVrA2o6JVw

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Watergate was not a media overreaction. It was real crimes, committed by a president and his men, exposed by secret tapes and brave reporting. 

JD Vance is attempting to rewrite this history so the corruption happening right now in front of us starts to feel normal.

If Watergate was nothing, then a $620 million Pentagon loan going to a company Donald Trump Jr.’s investment firm had invested in three months earlier is nothing. 

Then $1.6 billion in U.S. government support for a Kazakhstan mining project after Trump’s sons acquired a stake is nothing. 

Then a foreign billionaire facing bribery charges receiving a presidential pardon after his daughter gave $3.5 million to a Trump super PAC is nothing. 

Then a securities fraudster who donated $1.8 million receiving a pardon that erased hundreds of millions of dollars in financial penalties is nothing. 

Then pardons for people convicted in connection with January 6, including for those who violently assaulted police officers, are nothing.

Then directing the Justice Department to investigate political opponents while granting clemency to political allies is nothing. 

If all of that is nothing, then perhaps he is correct, Watergate was nothing.

Of course he is deeply wrong.

Either we will end the corruption, or the corruption will be the end of us.
https://t.co/CXOnEvB20l

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Trump has been allegedly selling pardons for up to $6 million each.

Now he may sell another 250 and pretend his open call for bribes and corruption is in celebration of our nation.

Most corrupt president ever — and it’s not even close.

[Trump Lie Tracker (Commentary Account) @MAGALieTracker]

BREAKING: Bombshell new reporting from CNBC reveals that Trump bought millions in Axon stock just two weeks before ICE sought a $220,000,000 deal to buy tasers from Axon.

This raises serious questions about insider trading as Trump continues to profit off of the presidency.

[FactPost @factpostnews]

Donald Trump on his housing affordability plan, in his own words:
—"It's so unimportant"
—"It's a big yawn"
—"I don't think about Americans' financial situation"
—"I don't want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up"

[Harry Sisson @harryjsisson]

Years of GOP election fraud hysteria, while almost all the actual election fraud is committed by Republicans.

Incredible.

[Dead lawyer @dead__lawyer]

@jmartin1056 @Michael_E_Lopez @oyvega @In_Related_News @jessesingal You’re right. I was reading that thinking “oh, that’s a MAGA pretending he’s no fan of Trump.”
This guy is MAGA all the way.

[No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen @NoLieWithBTC]

He’s literally blocking a bill that would make it easier for you to afford a home because he wants to be able to suppress voters ahead of the midterms.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

Abbott donated $500,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund, and now a federal investigation into them has been dropped.

Under the Trump administration, you can poison babies for a price.

[Zach W. Lambert @ZachWLambert]

Fighting for kids to receive state-mandated Bible instruction while fighting against those same kids receiving free lunch is exactly the kind of religious hypocrisy Christians should stand against.

This is what it looks like to take the Lord’s name in vain.

[Covie @covie_93]

They tried to impeach Joe Biden because Hunter worked on the board of a gas company and sold paintings.

[Senator John Hickenlooper @SenatorHick]

As a geologist, I’ll translate: the White House demolished a perfectly fine, historic walkway and replaced it with expensive granite.

Americans want cheaper gas and groceries, and Trump keeps wasting your money on vanity projects.

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

Trump claimed that he was going to personally pay for the new polished African granite walkway carved in Italy he had installed at the WH. But in fact taxpayers paid all $689,232 for Trump’s vanity project.

[Moe Davis (U.S. Air Force, Retired) @ColMoeDavis]

Here’s an in-depth New York Times article on how Trump, his family, and his cronies are abusing their government power to line their pockets and using billions of your tax dollars to facilitate their grifting. Note that the $8.9 billion in federal money going to the 14 Trump and Lutnick companies is equal to the entire amount of federal assistance Western North Carolina has received for Hurricane Helene recovery.

Rampant corruption in plain sight . . . and Republicans see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.

Here’s an excerpt from the article and a free link to the entire piece:

“Ahead of the deal, the Trump administration approved preliminary applications for as much as $1.6 billion in federal financing for the American company, now called Kaz Resources, which plans to break ground on the project in rural Kazakhstan.

It was not only Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick who saw an opportunity.

Their sons were soon doing business with partners in a deal that their fathers were negotiating, continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in the second Trump administration that has few precedents in American history.”

. . . . .

“One or both families have financial ties to at least 14 companies that are actively working with the federal government on critical mining deals, including the Kazakhstan project, according to federal filings examined by The New York Times.

All 14 of these companies have either benefited directly from offers of financial assistance from the Trump administration, or have pending permit applications before the Commerce Department, which Mr. Lutnick oversees, The Times found. The total amount of federal funding that the Trump administration has provided or is considering providing to the companies exceeds $8.9 billion, according to public statements by the companies and federal government.”

https://t.co/HvoK9qva0H

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

McRaven writes that throughout his career as a senior officer, he never once hesitated to provide his best military advice even when it contradicted the secretary or the president. He never feared that candid advice would end his career. He describes that honest engagement as the mechanism that kept senior leaders from making poor military decisions.

The firings of Donahue, George, Brown, Franchetti, and the others dismantle that mechanism. They send a message to every officer still in uniform: the cost of honest advice is your career. Hegseth says he is trying to "revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military." McRaven - who has more warrior ethos in his service record than Hegseth has had in his career - says the opposite is happening. The experienced voices the president needs to avoid military miscalculation are being shown the door. No explanation. No congressional notification until Democrats wrote it into the budget. No accountability.

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

Elias's comparison is the one worth sitting with. When Bill Clinton briefly boarded Loretta Lynch's plane on a Phoenix tarmac in 2016 and they talked about grandchildren and golf - no documented request, no documented outcome, a conversation - the media treated it as a scandal that required weeks of coverage. Trump stood at a podium in Pennsylvania, described personally calling a federal prosecutor to investigate an election while his preferred candidate was losing, and the Pennsylvania federal prosecutor was sitting in the audience being publicly thanked. Elias: none of the reporters present found this worthy of a question.

The normalization that allows that to happen is not benign. When the president describes using the federal prosecution apparatus to intervene in a state election and it registers as a moment of rally color rather than a constitutional question, the mechanism that would otherwise produce accountability has been eroded. That erosion is itself the story underneath the story.