Jack Smith told the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath that his investigation "developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation." Republicans spent four hours trying to turn it on him. Senator Eric Schmitt held up a poster of texts to put Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game the day after Fani Willis disclosed her affair, told him "I think you've already perjured yourself," and called him "a total dirtbag." Smith had been in Maryland watching Iowa's Caitlin Clark, he said. Iowa's team is the Hawkeyes. Schmitt never apologised. Senator John Kennedy asked Smith whether he believed in the Easter Bunny, then told him "you make me want to throw up in my mouth." No Republican argued Trump did not do what Smith described. Trump says he did nothing wrong.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth will cut 20 percent of the positions reserved for generals and admirals, double the 10 percent he ordered in May 2025, Fox News reported from Pentagon memos; he announces it Wednesday at Quantico. On September 22 he signed a memo ordering Cyber Command and the NSA to "identify, disrupt, and neutralize foreign interference in U.S. democratic processes," which the Pentagon published Monday. CNN reported the memo largely restores work those agencies did before Trump returned and shrank the FBI teams that tracked foreign influence.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Monday night that the plot beside RAF Fairford, the British base used by the U.S. military, "clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor." He named no country and offered no evidence. British police bailed the five men, all British nationals aged 23 to 25, on Monday without charge, and call a foreign-state proxy one line of inquiry among several. Asked whether Iran was behind it, Trump said "might be," then "I'd rather not say." The Narativ asked on Monday whether Fairford was a false-flag operation. A day later five men are home and nobody is charged.
Trump holds between $300 million and $1 billion in municipal bonds, CNBC calculated from his own disclosures: more than 1,000 positions, at least 243 bought this year, none sold, from cities, hospitals and power plants his government regulates. His accounts bought up to $100,000 of Georgia Power's Plant Bowen bonds in February 2025; 57 days later Trump exempted the plant from stricter EPA limits. CNBC found no evidence he traded on advance knowledge, and the White House says the family cannot "direct, influence, or provide input." The Wall Street Journal reported that Customs and Border Protection paid for the taxpayer-funded ads starring Trump, nearly $1.5 million by AdImpact's count. A president who waives a $400,000 salary holds up to a billion dollars of debt from borrowers who answer to him, and his border agency buys his airtime.
Senator Ted Cruz blocked the Democrats' AI safety-board bill and says nothing moves in his committee before the election. The same Tuesday Trump invited the chiefs of Google, Nvidia, Meta, Anthropic and Palantir to lunch, and launched America.gov, a government chatbot built on Google's Gemini and Elon Musk's Grok, telling the crowd it "cannot in theory be hacked into." The AP asked the bot who won 2020. It answered that official sources show no fraud changed the result. While Trump was still speaking, the answers changed: no more "political questions" on 2020, impeachment or his felony conviction. Two of his lunch guests built the machine that edited itself mid-speech. Cruz killed the rulebook the week the Republican president set the table for the companies it would have governed. The companies are at lunch.
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