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GOP Rep. Joe Barton Announces Retirement After Explicit Photo Leaked

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Texans ‘Lost Faith in Me’ Barton Says

U.S. Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) has just announced he will not seek re-election and will retire next year. The “family-values” lawmaker made the announcement in the wake of an explicit photo leaked online, showing him nude. He sent images, video, and messages to a woman he was in a relationship with, while still married to his second wife. 

“There are enough people who lost faith in me that it’s time to step aside and let there be a new voice for the 6th district in Washington, so I am not going to run for re-election,” Barton told The Dallas Morning News.

Barton supported the re-criminalization of sodomy in 2010.

The woman to whom he sent the images spoke to The Washington Post.

“It’s not normal for a member of Congress who runs on a GOP platform of family values and conservatism to be scouring the Internet looking for a new sexual liaison,” she said, explaining her motive for coming forward. 

The woman said Barton first reached out to her in 2011 after she posted a comment about politics on his Facebook page. As the two struck up a friendship, they would exchange messages for hours, including when he was on the House floor or in committee meetings, she said. 

Soon, Barton began flirting, making suggestive comments and sending explicit messages, she said. She described feeling uncomfortable with his advances at first.

“He says to me, ‘Do you want me to send you a picture of myself?’ I said, ‘Oh no, no. Please do not do that.’ It kind of started there,” she said.

Rep. Barton threatened the woman, saying he would contact the police if the images were used “in a way that would negatively affect my career.”

“In the 2015 phone call,” The Washington Post reported, “Barton confronted the woman over her communications with the other women, including her decision to share explicit materials he had sent. In that context, he mentioned the Capitol Police, a comment the woman interpreted as an attempt to intimidate her.”

“I want your word that this ends,” he said, according to the recording, adding: “I will be completely straight with you. I am ready if I have to, I don’t want to, but I should take all this crap to the Capitol Hill Police and have them launch an investigation. And if I do that, that hurts me potentially big time.”

“Why would you even say that to me?” the woman responded. “The Capitol Hill police? And what would you tell them, sir?”

Said Barton: “I would tell them that I had a three-year undercover relationship with you over the Internet that was heavily sexual and that I had met you twice while married and had sex with you on two different occasions and that I exchanged inappropriate photographs and videos with you that I wouldn’t like to be seen made public, that you still apparently had all of those and were in position to use them in a way that would negatively affect my career. That’s the truth.”

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‘Unacceptable and Intolerable’: Pirro’s Gun Crackdown Comments Trigger Right-Wing Revolt

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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is under fire over her anti-gun remarks, becoming the latest Trump administration official caught in a firearms backlash. Her threat to jail anyone who brings a gun into Washington, D.C., has set off a revolt across the political spectrum, spearheaded by right-wing gun groups and GOP lawmakers.

“You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” Pirro said on Fox News Monday afternoon. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back, and that makes all the difference.”

The New York Times reported that Pirro’s remarks “could deepen a growing rift between gun owners and the Trump administration.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) slammed Pirro, warning her, “Come and Take It.”

“I bring a gun into the district every week,” he wrote to Pirro. “I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others.”

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) declared, “This is not how this works,” and urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to “have a quick conversation” with Pirro for a “course correction here.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages at NYT Overnight — Says He Is Now Seeking $1 Billion From Harvard

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) added, “The District of Columbia has been ‘shall issue’ since 2017 when the requirement that you must have a ‘good reason’ to carry a handgun was struck down. Non-residents can obtain a permit in DC — don’t ask me how I know.”

U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), citing the Second Amendment, wrote: “Shall NOT be infringed is NOT a suggestion.”

“Our Second Amendment freedoms don’t disappear when we cross state lines or enter our nation’s capital city,” he added, before calling for a nationwide concealed carry reciprocity law.

Gun Owners of America, also, called for passage of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act in response to Pirro’s remarks, as did other gun rights groups.

“Unacceptable and intolerable” is how the National Association for Gun Rights characterized Pirro’s remarks, before turning its focus to the law.

“Jeanine Pirro threatening to arrest people for carrying in DC, even if they are law-abiding and licensed, shows how broken and out of touch these gun laws are,” the group said. “This is why we need Real Constitutional Carry nationwide. Bureaucrats act like the 2A does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights.”

The NRA did not mention Pirro by name, but also called for passage of the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, before declaring, “Your right to self-defense should not end simply because you crossed a state line or into Washington, D.C.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough, a former Republican U.S. Congressman, now an independent, called Pirro’s remarks “Unconstitutional drivel.”

Another former GOP congressman Joe Walsh, now a Democrat, called Pirro’s remarks the “latest piece of evidence in the Trump administration’s war against gun rights.”

“What Pirro just made is an un-constitutional threat against every American’s right to the 2nd Amendment, on national tv,” The Lincoln Project commented. “Trump and his admin are again trying to strip you of a constitutional right.”

Indeed, as Politico reported, President Donald Trump himself just last week said, “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns,” in relation to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents. Pretti was a licensed, concealed carry holder.

Trump went even further, saying, “certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” and, “I don’t like that he had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines, that’s a lot of bad stuff.”

FBI Director Kash Patel recently said, “you cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem also said that she didn’t “know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

 

Image via Shutterstock

 

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Trump Rages at NYT Overnight — Says He Is Now Seeking $1 Billion From Harvard

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President Donald Trump extended his late-night tirade against The New York Times early Tuesday, after posting a series of attacks late Monday night. The Times reported that the Trump administration had dropped its $200 million demand for a payment from Harvard University, setting off a fresh burst of anger from the president.

“Why hasn’t the Fake News New York Times adjusted its phony article on the corruption and antisemitism which has taken place at Harvard,” Trump railed Tuesday morning. “They never call for facts, or factchecks, because the Times’ is a corrupt, unprincipled, and pathetic vehicle of the Left.”

“They wrote only negatively about me in the last Election, and I won in a landslide,” Trump claimed, contrary to the certified results. He then took aim at what he claimed was the Times’ “rapidly falling circulation.”

In a post just past midnight, Trump had charged that the Times got its reporting about Harvard “completely wrong.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

“I hereby demand that the morons that run (into the ground!) the Times’ change their story, immediately,” the President wrote, despite the First Amendment’s strong protections for the press.

He then attacked the paper’s reporting on the election and polling results.

“The New York Times coverage of me is so purposely wrong. We will soon see how I do in my lawsuit against these fraudsters! FAKE NEWS!” he declared.

The president appeared to be referring to a report in The New York Times, which said in part that “President Trump has backtracked on a major point in negotiations with Harvard, dropping his administration’s demand for a $200 million payment to the government.”

Less than one hour earlier, Trump escalated his battle with Harvard University, calling the 389-year-old institution “Strongly Antisemitic,” while alleging it had been “behaving very badly.”

“We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University,” Trump wrote.

Pointing to discussions about a “job training concept” that he suggested had dissolved, the president called it “merely a way of Harvard getting out of a large cash settlement of more than 500 Million Dollars, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed. This should be a Criminal, not Civil, event.”

AFP reported that Trump’s allegations did not specify “the basis for criminal action or charges he envisaged could be involved.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

 

Image via Reuters

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DOJ Takes Down Thousands of Epstein Documents After Privacy Concerns Raised

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The Trump Department of Justice reportedly has removed thousands of documents from its Friday dump of millions of pages of Epstein files.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported on Monday that the DOJ told “the court that it has taken down ‘several thousands’ of documents from the Epstein Files website after victim privacy concerns were raised.”

In its message to two U.S District Court judges, the DOJ wrote: “The Department has worked all hours through the weekend from the point when the first victim-related concerns were raised. To that end, out of the larger production described above, the Department now has taken down several thousands of documents and media that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information due to various factors, including technical or human error.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the DOJ had “exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

“A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100 times in the files,” the Journal noted, “The Justice Department was required to redact all victims’ names prior to releasing the files. Officials said they had spent weeks doing so after receiving lists of names from victims’ attorneys.”

Late Monday morning, attorney and journalist Aaron Parnas identified two of the Epstein files he said were missing. According to Parnas, they included references to Trump having parties at Mar-a-Lago called “calendar girls.”

On Friday, DOJ blocked access to a document originally released as part of Friday’s Epstein files document dump. That document included language related to accusations against President Donald Trump and others. In just under an hour, access was restored after CNN anchor Jake Tapper noted the block on social media.

The DOJ’s removal of the files on Monday comes as some, including members of Congress, are asking for more files to be released.

“Where are the rest of the Epstein Files?” asked U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the prominent Intelligence Committee vice chairman, on Monday afternoon.

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

 

Image via Reuters 

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