Trump Lawyer Kenneth Chesebro Suddenly Faces Even More Legal Trouble (2025)

House Republicans are planning to have their annual retreat at President-elect Donald Trump’s golf resort Doral, Florida, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday.

This kind of corruption is nothing new for Republicans.

The Republican National Committee held several meetings at Trump National Doral in early 2020, and the first GOP meeting was held there in 2018, raking in a whopping $630,000 for Trump’s resort, The Washington Post reported at the time. The RNC spent nearly $500,000 on rental and catering alone, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.

Trump’s own 2024 campaign readily poured money back into the candidate’s businesses, shelling out around $60,000 between the Doral golf resort and the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas by June.

During Trump’s first administration, foreign governments and their associated entities spent more than $7.8 million on Trump’s many businesses, chief among them being Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., according to a damning report released by House Democrats in January. Ironically, this is the very same kind of corruption House Republicans have been desperate, and unsuccessful, to pin on President Joe Biden and his family members.

In 2019, Trump had pitched holding the G7 Global Summit at Trump Doral, before bipartisan criticism caused him to back off the idea.

The retreat is currently scheduled for January 27 through 29. While not all of the 220 Republicans representatives are required to go, or stay at Trump National Doral, it’s worth noting that room rates go for between $460 to $1,000 per night. Let’s hope the president-elect can at least get them a good discount.

Kash Patel was among 43 White House staffers whose phone records were obtained by the Justice Department during a leak investigation during Donald Trump’s first term, CNN reports, citing the department’s inspector general.

The investigation, which also included two members of Congress, was conducted secretly. Patel, whom Trump has chosen to replace Christopher Wray as FBI director, was not named in the report, nor were the two congresspeople. But two anonymous sources told CNN that the phone records of Patel and Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell were among those obtained.

The DOJ also went after the email addresses of journalists at CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, according to the report. At the time, the Trump administration was desperately trying to stop leaks of sensitive information, and were focusing on people who may have had security access.

An investigation based only on “the close proximity in time between access to classified information and subsequent publication of the information … risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch,” the inspector general wrote, adding that this kind of investigation creates “the appearance of inappropriate interference by the executive branch in legitimate oversight activity by the legislative branch.”

Patel may have been just one part of a broad investigation, but the fact that he was among those suspected of leaks calls into question why he’s now Trump’s pick to head the government’s largest law enforcement agency. If Wray is removed and Patel is confirmed to take over the FBI, such investigations might become the norm. The Trump gadfly only has three years as a federal prosecutor to account for his law enforcement experience, and seems ready to embark on haphazard attempts to prosecute the president’s real and imagined enemies.

It appears that disgraced former Representative Matt Gaetz has found his new job: anchor on One America News Network.

CNN reports that Gaetz is set to join the pro-Trump network after his bid to be attorney general collapsed under a mountain of drug and sexual misconduct allegations outlined in a buried House Ethics Committee report. It’s the second post-Congress gig for Gaetz, who last month announced that he was setting up an account on the celebrity video website Cameo.

Gaetz will apparently be hosting his own show on OANN, and a webpage bearing the name The Matt Gaetz Show is already live on the outlet’s website. OANN is not widely carried on cable and satellite television, and it was dropped by DirecTV in 2022. The network encourages viewers to stream its programming online.

Last month, Gaetz alluded to his new job in an interview with conservative personality Charlie Kirk.

“I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch. I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” Gaetz told Kirk.

If Gaetz were to return to Congress, his Ethics Committee report could be released, further damaging his image and political future. His role in the successful effort to unseat former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was actually connected to the misconduct allegations against him, according to McCarthy.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, McCarthy said Gaetz has himself to blame for his nomination failing.

“I blame Matt Gaetz for lying to [Donald Trump] about his ethics report,” McCarthy said, making the case that Gaetz convinced the president-elect to appoint him attorney general so that he could quit Congress and try to sink the Ethics Committee report against him. McCarthy also claimed Gaetz backed his ouster because of the report.

Donald Trump mocked Justin Trudeau and Canada after the Canadian prime minister pointed out that Americans are realizing how expensive life would be under Trump’s proposed tariffs.

“Trump got elected on a commitment to make life better and more affordable for Americans, and I think people south of the border are beginning to wake up to the real reality that tariffs on everything from Canada would make life a lot more expensive,” Trudeau said in a speech on Monday, promising retaliation if Trump went ahead with his planned tariffs.

In response, Trump made a Truth Social post shortly after midnight Tuesday referencing his recent dinner with Trudeau and yet again joked about Canada being part of the United States.

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada. I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all! DJT,” the post read.

Canada is America’s biggest trading partner, and while 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports would hurt their economy, retaliatory tariffs wouldn’t be good for the U.S. economy, either. Trudeau pointed out that the U.S. gets 65 percent of its crude oil from Canada, along with many other goods, ranging from steel to agricultural products.

Over the weekend, Trump tried to defend his tariff plan on NBC’s Meet the Press but couldn’t promise that it wouldn’t cause higher prices for Americans. He claimed that the U.S. was “subsidizing” Canada and Mexico, and offered a nonsensical solution.

“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico, and we’re subsidizing Canada, and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world,” Trump said. “And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.”

Realistically, Trudeau is right that tariffs would hurt both the U.S. and Canadian economies, and it’s hard to see any positive outcomes from a back-and-forth trade war. Trump may be able to threaten politicians in the states, but he might find that foreign leaders aren’t cowed by his brash rhetoric. Mexico has already made threats of its own in response to Trump’s tariffs, for example.