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The Shocking Way This Tulsi Gabbard PAC Spent Its Money

6 1
06.12.2024

Tulsi Gabbard’s PAC spent thousands in political funds to help get her personal manifesto on The New York Times bestseller list, Forbes reported Thursday.

Gabbard founded the leadership PAC Defend Freedom, Inc., in March. Although it initially reported having no cash on hand, the PAC would go on to spend $33,000 of its donors’ funds on a bunch of copies of Gabbard’s book.

The book, For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind, debuted in fourth place on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list during the week of May 4, but it was flagged for bulk purchases, as large orders might have affected its ranking. The book stayed on the list for one more week.

At least some of those bulk purchases came from Gabbard’s PAC: On July 11, Defend Freedom made the first of four disbursements for “printing” to BulkBooks, a book wholesaler based in Franklin, Tennessee, that specializes in large orders. The disbursements totaled $33,000.

“For a limited time, Defend Freedom PAC supporters who gave $100 or more received Tulsi Gabbard’s NYT bestselling book For Love of Country,” Gabbard spokesperson Erika Tsuji confirmed.

Authors normally receive royalties for book copies purchased wholesale, which indicates that Gabbard profited personally from the bulk order (rather than if her PAC had requested copies from the publisher directly). Her spokesperson didn’t comment on this when asked over email.

While this is not illegal, it is shady. “She is not a federal candidate or an officeholder, so she is allowed to personally profit when her PAC buys her book with donors’ funds,” campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel explained to Forbes.

Gabbard has shifted hard from an edgy Democrat to an unflinching, QAnon-adjacent Donald Trump loyalist. This book, and the subsequent bestseller scam, is straight from her new alt-right grifter playbook.

Rudolph Giuliani is facing more legal action from two Georgia election workers who successfully sued him for defamation in December last year.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss asked a New York federal judge Thursday to impose “severe” sanctions and hold the former Donald Trump lawyer and ex–New York City mayor in civil contempt after Giuliani failed to turn over discovery documents related to the seizure of his property to settle the defamation ruling against him.

Giuliani ignored an October 28 court order to turn over the documents within 14 days and then disregarded a November 22 court order specifying a mandatory four-day window to produce the documents. After the November 26 deadline came and went with no action from Giuliani, Freeman and Moss’s attorneys told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that “the time has come for Court to hold Mr. Giuliani in contempt for violating both the October 28 and November 22 Orders, and enter a contempt sanction it finds appropriate.”

The MAGA gadfly has desperately tried to delay and disregard the legal proceedings against him for falsely accusing Freeman and Moss of manipulating ballots during the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, resulting in Trump supporters sending the pair death threats, engaging in harassment, and protesting at their homes.

Last month, Giuliani even cited Trump’s upcoming inauguration in a motion to delay his trial, only to be denied by the judge, sending him into a pathetic rant.

“It’s punishment for being the one who revealed first Joe Biden’s 30-year criminality,” Giuliani whined at the time. “He’s been trying to torture me, stop me, take everything away from me since then.” It wasn’t clear if he was complaining about Biden or the judge in the case, Lewis J. Liman.

It’s unclear if Trump will bail out his former lawyer with a pardon, as the president-elect has already stiffed Giuliani on unpaid legal fees. Giuliani has already had to give up some of his prized possessions to Freeman and Moss, including luxury watches, a diamond ring, and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz. He also blew off another legal deadline in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. If Giuliani is held in contempt, the next penalty he faces could be prison.

Senator Tommy Tuberville is willing to do anything he can to make Donald Trump’s transition easier, even if it means completely forgoing one of the most important parts of his job.

Tuberville told reporters from CNN Wednesday that the Senate didn’t need to complete the vetting processes for Cabinet confirmations because Trump already did such a great job of that, even using the controversial Pete Hegseth as an example. Tuberville went so far as to suggest that Democrats who were merely doing their research were actually attacking nominees.

“Who are we to say that [the Senate is] a better vetter and picker of people than Donald Trump?” Tuberville asked CNN’s Manu Raju.

“Advise and consent, that’s your job,” Raju correctly replied, referring to the power vested in the Senate to approve treaties and appointments. Tuberville replied that that was more the Democrats’ job.

“Donald Trump did all the vetting they needed to do on Pete Hegseth,” Tuberville continued. I just can’t believe we even have people on our side that are saying, ‘Well I’ve got to look at this, gotta........

© New Republic


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