Good evening. I’m British Chris, and this is Raw America. If you’re watching this right now on Substack, help us get these stories in front of the most people by clicking the ❤️ and hitting the restack button. It costs nothing and helps tremendously.
Today, leaked emails obtained by our sister publication show Donald Trump’s White House played a direct role in drafting the FBI memo that shut down the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. The president is openly bragging that he ordered the Justice Department to sue a state to block the Senate race from being certified if the Trump-endorsed Republican doesn’t win. In Iowa, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor is being sued by his own elderly parents for more than a quarter of a million dollars in unpaid rent. And in Georgia, Trump-endorsed Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Collins is facing a new wave of criticism over remarks he made about pushing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of an airplane and hanging top American generals.
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In July of last year, the FBI released a memo on the files pertaining to its two federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein that led to widespread outrage. It declared there was no Epstein “client list,” no co-conspirators who could be criminally charged and no reason for any further investigations. That announcement even infuriated Trump’s own MAGA base, and kicked off a chain of events that ultimately led to the ouster of then-Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Now, leaked emails obtained by Raw America’s sister publication, Raw Story, show the White House played a direct role in crafting that memo. Two weeks before it went public, then-White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich emailed FBI Director Kash Patel asking if he has “something I can edit,” with the subject line referring to a draft memo from the DOJ that hadn’t yet been edited.
Patel sent it over in a matter of hours. The next day, Budowich told Patel he’d passed the draft along to the White House’s communications staff and that it needed to go out on DOJ and FBI letterhead.
Then, roughly a week later, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent Budowich the “final version.” Budowich wasn’t happy with the final product as it lacked the official seal of the Justice Department. He wrote back that he needed it on DOJ and FBI letterhead and that he couldn’t give a reporter something that “could easily be confused with a [high school] term paper.” Blanche’s attorney, Diego Pestana, then sent over a new version roughly 90 minutes later.
Chris Swartz of the Democracy Defenders Fund told Raw Story the emails show Kash Patel “worked hand in hand” with the Trump White House on the Epstein files memo. He said the level of coordination shown was deeply concerning, given Trump’s long history with Epstein and how often Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files.
So to recap, the memo telling America there was nothing left to see relating to Jeffrey Epstein was, at least in part, a product of the White House communications team. The framers of the Constitution built our system of checks and balances precisely to stop a president from controlling federal investigations that might reach him.
Donald Trump is also now openly admitting that he ordered his Justice Department to interfere with a close U.S. Senate race in a red state that Republicans desperately need to win in order to maintain their majority.
DOJ lawyers officially filed a lawsuit on Friday claiming that a second Republican candidate on the ballot, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., will confuse voters who intend to support incumbent Senator Daniel S. Sullivan. Trump told reporters on Friday that he was, “the one that said do it,” arguing that his opposition has “two Dan Sullivans.”
The lawsuit is asks a judge to prevent Alaska from certifying the result of the November 3 election if Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan doesn’t win. The DOJ is banking on the theory that if every vote for Daniel J. Sullivan had gone to the senator, and the state’s ranked-choice process had properly played out, the incumbent would’ve come out on top were it not for the confusion.
The timing of the lawsuit is key. Some of the latest polls out of Alaska show Sen. Sullivan in an exceptionally tight race with his Democratic opponent, former Congresswoman Mary Peltola. She would be the first Democrat elected as a U.S. senator from Alaska since Mark Begich in 2008.
This is all coming as Trump is now directly threatening to assert federal control of elections ahead of the November midterms in which voters will decide which party controls Congress for the next two years. A president suing to block certification of an election unless his endorsed candidate comes out on top is the kind of thing we used to associate with authoritarian banana republics.
Speaking of lawsuits, Iowa’s Republican nominee for lieutenant governor is now the center of a particularly embarrassing story, having been sued by his own parents for not paying rent.
The Des Moines Register is reporting that Duane and Jackie Wulf, who are 83 and 82 years old, respectively, accused their 45-year-old son Derek Wulf of refusing to pay rent on farmland he leased from them. They’re now seeking $275,000 worth of unpaid rent, and are also accusing him of lying about his assets in financial documents he submitted to a lender.
Derek Wulf has yet to comment on the lawsuit. However, his running mate —Trump-endorsed Republican gubernatorial nominee Zach Lahn — denied that Wulf owes his parents any money, and went on to suggest that the legal dispute is rooted in Duane Wulf’s ailing health. Both Duane and Jackie Wulf said Lahn’s claim is “categorically false.”
Derek Wulf is no stranger to lawsuits. Since 2023, he’s been sued by eight different people and entities who have taken Wulf and his company, Shallow Creek Land & Livestock, to court over unpaid debts. Wulf settled all but one of those cases, with WCF Financial Bank being the one holdout. The bank accused Wulf of being more than a year behind on his payments.
Someone with such a shady track record seeking to become one of the most powerful people in state government should be more than a little concerning for Hawkeye State voters. But current polls show both Lahn and Wulf trailing Democrat Rob Sand by roughly 11 points. That’s particularly striking given that Trump carried the state by more than a dozen percentage points in 2024.
Finally, CNN is reporting on newly surfaced comments from Republican Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia, who Donald Trump endorsed in the race against Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff. According to the network’s Andrew Kaczynski, Collins once joked about pushing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of an airplane and suggested that top generals be hanged.
During the U.S. military’s August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Collins posted a video to his social media account of Taliban fighters hanging a man from a helicopter. He added that anyone who said this should happen to some of America’s military and political leaders would probably get banned from all platforms, then added, “So good thing no one says that.”
A month before that post, Collins went on the Christian radio show “Sandy Rios in the Morning,” and the host remarked that fellow Republican candidate Joe Kent could catch a flight with Nancy Pelosi. Collins joked that Kent he “might push her out,” then emphasized he was only kidding.
In 2024, Collins shared a post commenting that a reported undocumented immigrant should get “a ticket on Pinochet Air for a free helicopter ride,” which is a reference to Chilean dictator Agosto Pinochet’s well-documented practice of throwing his political opponents out of helicopters.
And in January of last year, on the fourth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, Collins suggested that the rioters who attacked hundreds of police officers and smashed windows to get into the Capitol building were simply “peaceful grandmothers” taking an unauthorized tour. He then heaped praised on Donald Trump for pardoning the insurrectionists. It’s important to note that at least five people died as a result of the Capitol insurrection.
Kaczynski has also previously that Collins’ son-in-law is an alleged white nationalist with a history of posting Nazi imagery and antisemitic insults online. When Ossoff brought up that report it a debate last week, Collins insisted that he condemns all hate speech and has fired people over it, before pivoting to attacking Ossoff.
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I’m British Chris. Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting independent media. If you haven’t yet, please be sure to click the ❤️ and tap restack. It’s what helps us get these stories in front of the people who really need them. Have a great weekend.
