The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

The circus may finally be reaching its grand finale.

Since Trump announced his candidacy for President in 2015, he, his associates, and various business and political groups linked to him have faced a nearly endless series of investigations from entities across the law enforcement spectrum.

Several of his close associates have been tried, convicted, and imprisoned for various stretches of time. But so far, none of the investigations has managed to touch The Donald himself.

That may be about to change in the coming week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently brought former Trump attorney Michael Cohen to speak before a grand jury investigating the 2016 payoff scheme to silence porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump had an affair. Prosecutors from Bragg’s office met with Daniels this week.

All this, plus some conjecture about how New York state grand juries work, has fanned feverish expectations that Bragg’s office will bring charges against Trump in the remaining weeks of March. Law enforcement in New York City are reportedly preparing for how to handle a potential indictment of the former President at Manhattan Criminal Court, while an attorney for Trump confirmed on Friday that he would not refuse to surrender if indicted. “There won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago,” attorney Joe Tacopina said.

But here’s the thing: the potentially forthcoming charges deal with a 2016 hush money scandal, one that’s been hashed out ad nauseam as Trump apparently committed a string of other misdeeds from the White House: trying to reverse the result of the 2020 election, extorting Ukraine into manufacturing dirt on the Bidens, and squirreling classified material away in Mar-a-Lago, to name the hits.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is examining Mar-a-Lago and the wannabe coup attempt, while Fulton County DA Fani Willis is currently mulling an indictment in Trump’s 2020 election interference. It’s not to suggest that Bragg is erring in potentially taking a big first step towards accountability on a story that predates the Trump presidency, but rather to ask: what else might be coming?
 

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Josh Kovensky

Room Where It Happens 

It’s been a whirlwind week for one of the most-watched legal cases in the country.

Down in Amarillo, Texas, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is mulling whether to revoke the FDA’s 20-year-old approval of mifepristone, a drug often prescribed with misoprostol to induce abortions.

While the anti-abortion groups’ arguments are as unprecedented as they are flimsy, it is widely expected that Kacsmaryk, a hard right-wing Trump-appointee, will revoke the approval. The biggest question from many corners has been: what’s taking him so long?

Then, at the end of last week, some observers noticed that there was a skipped number on the docket. Usually, that indicates a sealed filing. In addition to the odd notices of appearances from attorneys for the parties — appearance for what? There were no hearings scheduled — it became clear that something was going on behind closed doors.

A few days later, the Washington Post reported that Kacsmaryk had held a conference call with the lawyers, telling them that he was scheduling a hearing Wednesday and asking them to keep it secret.

On Tuesday, I broke the news of what exactly was said on that call, and TPM published the transcript. Kacsmaryk told the lawyers that he was going to wait until late Tuesday to post the hearing on the docket publicly to avoid protesters and due to an influx of “death threats.”

The hearing went on as planned Wednesday — though, as I reported, the promised “live stream” ended up being the audio from the Amarillo courtroom piped into a courthouse in Dallas.

And now we’re back where we began: waiting for Kacsmaryk to determine if the availability of this vital drug will be thrown suddenly into flux. 

— Kate Riga

New Type of Guy Just Dropped

Gov. Ron DeSantis does not like the mainstream press. He does, however, like the DeSantis Bros, a handful of far-right activists who’ve launched media outlets with DeSantis-friendly overtones.

The trio have managed to snag exclusive interviews with the governor as well as scoops about his administration— nothing unflattering of course. When approached by TPM, two of them claimed that their goals are to produce trustworthy news just like anybody else. They even got into a Twitter spat last September with each other over journalistic integrity—just like the rest of us! 

In reality, it’s hard to see the outlets as anything more than a useful propaganda tool for the governor’s expected 2024 prez run, especially when they’ve publicly aligned themselves with his ideology. Read more here. 

— Kaila Philo

‘Explosive’ MTG Claims Agents Found At Border Was Just A Ball Of Duct Taped Sand

U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz set the record straight on Wednesday debunking MAGA-aligned conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) recent claims that agents found an “explosive” near the southern border in January.

Greene initially brought up the issue at the Homeland Security Committee hearing House Republicans performatively held near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. Later that day, Greene also posted it on Twitter, sharing a picture of the alleged explosive device she claimed agents found at the border and argued “the Cartel” was “planting bombs” and “murdering Americans everyday through drugs and crime.”

Ortiz quickly corrected the record in a post of his own, saying the “explosive” was in fact just “a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn’t deemed a threat to agents/public.”

But despite Ortiz setting the record straight, Greene refused to walk back her false claim and continued to tweet about the so-called “explosive.”

The infamously far-right member of Congress has a history of dabbling in false or misleading information to push her own political agenda – making this ball of ridiculousness hardly a surprise.

— Emine Yücel 

“George Santos is a joke of a ‘congressman’ and I look forward to standing with the Nassau County Republican Committee in supporting his primary opponent should he make the foolish decision to run and lose in 2024.” 

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito’s  (R-NY) statement to TPM after the frontrunner for the liar of the year Rep. George Santos (R-NY) filed a statement of candidacy to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, signaling that he might run to seek another term in Congress in 2024.

The paperwork does not guarantee he will run for reelection but it does give Santos permission to fundraise and spend money on campaign-related expenses.

— Emine Yücel 

Craving More Content?

We’ve launched a new feature that makes it even easier to read TPM’s Morning Memo. We made it into a newsletter!

Sign up here to get all the essential reading on the news you care about most injected straight into your veins (inbox) each morning.