Hey everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for being here.
Our top story today. The Justice Department just charged James Comey for the third time in a little over a year. The first one got thrown out. The second one is about seashells and even their own side knows it’s a joke, so they went looking for a third. The problem is this one has already been investigated by Trump’s own DOJ. Twice. Both times they found nothing to charge. But the statute of limitations runs out this week, so they skipped the grand jury and filed it anyway.
We’ll also get into Don Jr.’s luxury hunting trip with a Kremlin-connected businessman, Trump losing again in court over California ballots, another top CDC doctor heading for the exit after only six months, and the affordability math that should scare every Republican on the ballot.
Believe it or not, the election is only a week away from today. Staying informed is more important than ever. So do me a favor. Like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Let’s get to it.
1. Trump DOJ Charges Comey Again
In October 2016, reporters revealed that a secret surveillance court had ordered Yahoo to scan its users’ emails for signs of a terrorist group. The department says Comey was the source. But Trump’s own prosecutor, John Durham, looked at this exact leak back in 2018 and recommended no charges. Then the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington opened a second investigation, code-named Tropical Vortex. It closed in February 2020 with no charges. As Comey’s lawyer put it: “both times the Government determined that no charges should be brought against anyone.”
The statute of limitations runs out this week. So instead of going to a grand jury, the department filed something called a criminal information. The department says that’s “a widely recognized practice” for stopping the clock. That’s one way to put it. Another way is they had nine years to bring this case and couldn’t, so they bought themselves more time.
Here’s Comey last night.
The courts have had his back so far. The first case is gone because the prosecutor was never legally appointed. The second one is the seashells case. That’s gone nowhere, and pretty much every legal expert who’s looked at it has said it’s absurd. Which is probably why they’re onto case number three.
And then there’s his daughter. Maurene Comey was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan for ten years. She prosecuted Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sean Combs aka P. Diddy. In July 2025, she was fired by memo with no reason given. The government admitted in court that her performance reviews were “outstanding” every year. Yesterday, a judge ruled the firing unlawful, called the administration’s position “a sweeping and unprecedented theory of executive authority,” reinstated her, and ordered back pay.
So this is what we’re dealing with. A Justice Department that will keep going after someone no matter how many times it loses, and will go after his family if that’s what it takes. All to keep the toddler who ended up in the White House happy. Trump said he’d do this. He campaigned on it. And the people he put in charge at the DOJ keep trying.
2. Don Jr.’s Oligarch Hunting Buddy
In January 2025, Don Jr. stood on stage at a Safari Club auction selling a spot on his weeklong Mongolian hunting trip. “Will you beat 225,000? I’m giving you a bargain,” he said, later throwing in a stay at Mar-a-Lago.
That’s the online listing. The winning bids were 225,000 and 140,000 dollars. So, as usual, Trump’s family is selling access. But the story doesn’t end there.
After Don Jr. set up camp in western Mongolia with a secret Secret Service detail and his two VIP guests, a man named Umar Kremlev flew in on a chartered jet to join the party. A local on the trip said the two men were careful not to be photographed together.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s because this is the same Russian oligarch who bankrolled Don Jr.’s luxury island wedding, before backlash forced the groom to pay it all back.
This man has quite the history. According to criminal records the FT obtained, he was convicted of extortion and battery as a young man. In 2010 he changed his name to Kremlev, which literally means “of the Kremlin.” Doesn’t really get more on the nose than that. He runs the International Boxing Association with Russian energy money and has close ties to Putin’s personal security service. In April he was at the Kremlin with Putin. In May he traveled to China as Putin’s right-hand man.
Don Jr.’s spokesman says the two share a personal friendship based on their shared love of hunting. And hey, maybe they do. But, as one of Trump’s former NSC officials put it to FT: “It really doesn’t matter if people have the most above board intentions. The moment the Russian security and intelligence services figure out someone has a relationship with anyone of high value, they will try to weaponise that.”
After the hunt, Don Jr. slipped into a suit and dined with the president of Mongolia. Supposedly they didn’t talk politics.
If you want to know why the administration seems to always end up on Russia’s side, just look at who the people close to the president hang around. When it comes to foreign influence, this administration is like swiss cheese: there’s about a hundred ways in. And only one of them has to work.
3. Court Rejects Trump Ballot Grab
Quick recap. The Justice Department sued California, demanding they set aside 20,000 votes they claimed could be from non-citizens. LA officials said the list had all sorts of issues: thousands of names had no Social Security numbers, and many of the addresses were outside the county.
Yesterday, the 9th Circuit refused to step in. The majority wrote that “The United States’s claimed emergency, at least in part, is a self-constructed one.” That line could apply to half the things the administration does.
This ruling is mostly about speed. A trial judge will still hear the case on the merits. But the two judges in the majority also made clear that they didn’t support setting the ballots aside at all this late in the game.
It’s not just California the administration is targeting. The DOJ has also asked Washington State to set aside more than 400 ballots. The acting U.S. attorney there called the request “only the tip of the iceberg.” Washington’s Secretary of State said it was only “intended to cast unfounded suspicion on the results.”
A week out, the pattern has become clear. A lawsuit in Alaska. Trying to exclude ballots in California and Washington. A bounty for fraud information. Every court has said the same thing: the claims are nonsense, and the timing is wrong. These lawyers know that already. But the point isn’t to win the court case. It’s to have something to point at when they lose the election.
4. RFK Loses Another Top Doctor
Jennifer Shuford is the CDC’s deputy director and chief medical officer, an infectious disease doctor who formerly ran Texas’s health department. She was hired in April as part of a four-person team that was supposed to restore confidence in the agency. The Post reports she’s leaving after the election. One source said she disagreed with the administration’s approach to vaccines. Another cited a family health issue.
Whatever the reason, once again, what’s important is the pattern. Just last year, RFK Jr. forced out the CDC director after less than a month over a vaccine disagreement. Senior scientists followed her. Shuford was supposed to be the one to right the ship and reassure the staff who care about getting the science right. The signs were good. While RFK downplayed the Texas measles outbreak, Shuford spoke plainly about it. But she has clearly been unable to steer the secretary away from his bizarre ideology or slow his push to rewrite the childhood vaccine schedule.
The bigger picture here is that the nation’s public health agency is coming apart at the seams. And the reason isn’t complicated. If you’re a real doctor, it’s hard to take orders from a conspiracy theorist.
5. Costs Crush GOP Battlegrounds
The Washington Post looked at the 46 House districts that will decide control next week. For each one, they compared what a family of four needs for the basics with what they were actually earning.
In 42 of the 46, costs were growing faster than incomes. 60 percent of households in those districts no longer earn enough to cover the basics. Republicans are defending most of those seats, and the gap is worse in their districts. Rents in Republican-held battlegrounds are up 9 percent over three years. Democratic-held battlegrounds have only seen a 4 percent increase.
The Post got some good quotes from the districts they were investigating. They spoke with a woman in Rockland County, New York who has a master’s degree and a hospital job, but runs short of covering the basics for her family. She picks up barista shifts at night to make ends meet. “I have a quote-unquote good job, and I’m just struggling so much. Where did I make a bad decision?”
A scientist in Scottsdale was more blunt: “I would like to see the people who are immiserating our country punished, because they have gotten away with making our lives worse.”
A lot of the squeeze comes from gas prices. But the administration is still unwilling to take accountability. Here’s who JD Vance blames.
“Every time some tinpot dictator decides to throw a tantrum.” Surely even Vance can see the irony in that statement. Did he forget you’re not supposed to badmouth the boss? Or is this just a bold opening to his 2028 campaign?
At least by my calendar, we’ve got an election coming up. So Trump isn’t a tinpot dictator quite yet. But his disastrous agenda has certainly had consequences for the American people. And according to this data, his own base has been hit the hardest.
Many will stick with Trump and the GOP until the very end. But others will see that the numbers just don’t add up. And they’ll realize that their representatives in Congress have done nothing but enable the man who has made the pain worse. It’s a recipe for a midterm blowout. And I can’t wait.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
New tax records reviewed by Sludge show that the group that helped put Cornel West on presidential ballots in 2024 got every dollar of its funding that year from a conservative dark money network backed by Elon Musk. People Over Party reported $7.7 million in revenue in 2024. All of it came from a single grant from a nonprofit called Interstate Priorities. Interstate’s entire 2024 revenue, $10.1 million, came from Building America’s Future, a group the Wall Street Journal has tied to tens of millions in Musk money. None of the three groups responded to Sludge’s requests for comment. West ran as a left-wing independent, and Democrats spent much of 2024 warning that his campaign could pull votes from Kamala Harris in close states. That same year Musk spent roughly $290 million to elect Trump and Republicans, and one of Interstate’s directors runs a consulting firm that has been paid about $1.7 million by Musk’s America PAC.
Politico published a deep dive Monday on how Greg Abbott and Big Tech turned Texas into the data center capital of the country, and how it has blown up in his face ahead of the November election. Abbott signed the sales tax exemption for large data centers back in 2015, and that break now costs the state more than $1 billion a year. He took at least $1.6 million from tech executives last year, and in November he stood next to Google’s CEO to announce a $40 billion investment and called Texas “the epicenter of AI development.” Then the polling turned. A majority of Texas voters, including 54 percent of Republicans, now oppose new data centers in their communities, and Abbott has spent the summer calling for audits, a rural building ban, and repeal of the very tax break he created. His campaign says he is making data centers pay their own way and protect Texas water and power. Trump has called the pause a mistake and says the industry could be bigger than oil.
