A Maryland man who created a pro-Trump PAC during the 2016 campaign was indicted for tax evasion after using donations to purchase a luxury European car, an engagement ring for his fiance, and a chartered yacht cruise during which he proposed, the Baltimore Banner reports.

Ian Hawes created American Horizon PAC, registering it in Texas for the 2016 election.  According to OpenSecrets.org, the group raised more than $1.1 million from 20,000 donors during the election cycle, but did not register any donations to federal candidates.  The group’s primary solicitation promotion promised to raffle off a chance to have dinner with Donald Trump himself;  turns out, no donor was ever selected to have dinner with Trump.  At one point, the fraud was so blatant, even the campaign of the now-indicted ticket-topping fraudster sent him a cease-and-desist order in 2016, Politico reports.

Instead, Hawes used more than $375,000 dollars of the money on personal items, including purchasing a German-made Audi, buying an engagement ring for his fiance, and chartering a private yacht cruise during which he reportedly proposed.  Other than paying for his personal expenses, Hawes directed $133,000 to a data mining company he owned, and used more than $400,000 for online advertising.

Sources tell the Washington Post that Trump’s main internal lawyer, total far right asshole Boris Epshteyn, has been sidelined internally after one too many fuckups in his zealous representation of the Orange God Emperor in multiple criminal investigations and civil cases.

At least several other Trump lawyers have threatened to quit if they had to continue working with the Russian-born Epshteyn – who the New York Times reports is scheduled for a Thursday interview with Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith to answer questions in either the Mar-a-Lago classified documents theft or January 6th coup attempt investigations – or both. FBI agents paid an unfriendly visit to Epshteyn and seized his phone last summer in the latter probe.

Republican Montana state lawmakers on Wednesday shelved a proposed bill to turn the state’s 2024 Senate election – and only that election – into a top-two jungle primary that would have blocked any Libertarian from splitting votes off the from the Republican challenger to vulnerable incumbent Democrat Senator Jon Tester in the November election, the Associated Press reports.

The Florida state Board of Education on Wednesday passed a resolution expanding Tiny D’s draconian “Don’t Say Gay” law to cover students in all grades K through 12, ABC News reports.

“This amendment prohibits classroom instruction to students in pre-kindergarten through Grade 3 on sexual orientation or gender identity. For Grades 4 through 12, instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards… or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend,” said the amendment.

A new USA Today/Suffolk University survey finds 14 percent of Biden 2020 voters supporting anti-vax freak Robert F Kennedy Jr’s 2024 presidential primary challenge, while 67 percent said they’ll stick with the 80 year-old sitting president. Another 5 percent backed New-Age book author weirdo Marianne Williamson’s 2024 presidential bid and 13 percent were undecided.

Bobby Junior officially announced his campaign at an event in Boston on Wednesday, introduced by his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, and fellow weirdo Democrat Dennis Kucinich.

On Wednesday the US Military’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office Director, Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, author of a recent draft paper considering an intelligent extraterrestrial origin for the “Oumuamua” object will testify before a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Republican-majority Tennessee state Senate on Wednesday sent a bill shielding gun and ammo manufacturers and sellers from lawsuits to Governor Billy Lee’s desk for signature, the AP reports on business as usual in a state where three adults and three children were massacred by an AR-15 armed maniac at the Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville less than a month ago.

Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was released from New York’s Rikers Island jail Wednesday morning after completing his 100 days of his five-month sentence, given a shortened sentence for good behavior, Reuters reports. Amazingly, Weisselberg retained in his post at the Trump Org throughout his incarceration despite being found guilty of financial crimes that robbed the company of cash to avoid paying taxes… because legitimate companies frequently keep on people convicted of financial fraud as their senior corporate financial officers after they’ve been found to have stolen from the company, acts which cost the company more than $1.7 million in fines.

Weisselberg faces additional legal difficulties in the coming months as Donald Trump stands trial for criminal charges related filing false financial statements to cover up his exceptionally brief sexual encounters with adult film actress Stormy Daniels, a conspiracy Weisselberg was a party to according to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Sure libs, celebrate your big “win” over Fox News having to pay out $787 million to Soros-backed Dominion Voting Systems. Cheers with your trans Bud Light bottles and organic klombucha or whatever the hell that fruity new age bullshit is. You have no idea what kind of can of worms this just opened on your fake news propaganda outlets CNN and MSNBC over their years of lies about President Trump and Russia after the 2016 election. Dominion may have avoided having to share their vote-stealing software’s secret code in court, but the leftist hate networks won’t be so lucky when Trump and the Russian Federation file a multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuit in two weeks.

All of their lies will be exposed in front of an unbiased jury with no liberals on it, since the case will be brought in Arkansas or West Virginia and not in some urban shithole court system. Sorry libs, no Hillary or AOC donors will be allowed to decide this case. Only Trump voters will be selected since they’re the only Americans who can be trusted to hear the overwhelming evidence fairly. But the judge will probably just rule against CNN and MSNBC before the trial even starts because they reported made-up garbage stories like Paul Manafort and highly respected General Michael Flynn having secret meetings with Russians. Both were exonerated when President Trump justly pardoned them. Russian President Vladimir Putin has a very strong claim against them even beyond the 2016 election, since CNN and MSNBC have falsely reported that he sent troops to attack innocent people in Ukraine when he was really defending his country from their Fauci-funded Nazi bioweapons labs.

Just wait until Rachel Maddow has to take the stand and explain why she made up that story about Donald Trump Jr, a highly respected businessman, meeting with Russian agents to collude in the 2016 election. He said it was about adoptions! And collusion isn’t a crime anyway, so it’s clear that CNN and MSDNC are in big fucking trouble for defaming Trump and Russia. They’re going to have to pay billions and billions of dollars for their lies, way more than Fox News did for just having a different opinion than the mainstream media narrative about Dominion. Just wait libs, it’s coming.

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage now that we’ve offered our right wing readers a different perspective on the Fox News settlement. We hope they enjoyed this fantasy.

“Civil rights and personal injury attorneys Ben Crump, Antonio Romanucci, and local counsel, retired Judge Earnestine Hunt Dorse, will announce the filing of a civil lawsuit against the City of Memphis, Memphis Police Department, and individual officers for the January 2023 death of Tyre Nichols. The 29-year-old father was killed after a pretextual traffic stop and a brutal beating by Memphis Police Officers,” says attorney Benjamin Crump in a Wednesday statement

A Tufts University civic engagement think tank study finds Michigan led among all states in 2022 midterms youth turnout at 37 percent of all eligible voters between ages of 18 to 29, fueled in part by the successful abortion access ballot measure, the Detroit News reports.

Nationwide turnout in the 18 to 29 demographic was 23 percent – higher than 2014’s abysmal 13 percent but short of the 28 percent in 2018, which is pretty damn impressive considering that in 2022 Trump was no longer in the White House activating opposition to his regime. Tied for a close second to Michigan were Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon at 36 percent 18 to 29 turnout, followed by Colorado at 33 percent, and Pennsylvania at 32 percent. No other states cracked 30 percent.

High School Musical star promotes witchcraft for new film: 'Something that I am very passionate about’ https://t.co/pR5ixNUqxW

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 19, 2023

Russian authorities in the Kabardino-Balkarian region of the country recently fined 70 year-old Olga Slegina 40,000 rubles (about $490) for calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “a handsome young man with a good sense of humor,” during a conversation at a health clinic in December, the Daily Beast reports citing the rights organization Memorial’s report on the incident.

Imagine, more than five years after you had your glory, taking over an elitist college campus to show your racial superiority, and you’re now resting on those laurels with your polo shirt and khakis folded and in a drawer with your hood and robe when… there’s a knock at the trailer door.  Justice doesn’t rest:  A Virginia grand jury indicted three participants in the infamous tiki torch march that crossed the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 2017, saying the defendants carried lighted objects in an attempt to intimidate, CNN reports.

The indictments by the Albemarle County grand jury indicted Dallas Medina of Ravenna, Ohio; Wil Zachary Smith of Nacona, Texas; and Tyler Bradley Dykes of Bluffton, South Carolina in February.  Smith had been arrested in January and continues to be in custody.  Medina was arrested Monday and Dykes was arrested Friday.  Commonwealth attorney James Hingeley campaigned in 2020 on pursuing charges against many of the participants in the white nationalist Unite the Right rally, something his predecessor declined to do.

What a fucking moron. His first mistake was going on CNN where they’re going to ask this sort of question, the second was actually answering it more or less directly in the middle of the standard Republican nonsense and dissembling. At least none of his fans will end up seeing this.

It’s disappointing.  We wanted Rupert Murdoch on the stand.  “Yeah, we lied about Dominion, mate,” he’d yell in a geriatric Australian accent as he broke under the demand to put his hand on the Bible.  “We needed to get our viewers back, crikey!”  “And we’d do it again to protect President Trump!” Hannity screams from the gallery. Tucker Carlson giggles maniacally as attendants tighten the sleeves of his jacket.  Judge Jeanine, splayed on the courtroom floor in a pool of merlot, gives a reactive thumbs up like a Pavlovian dog.  Maria Bartiromo puffs on a Benson & Hedges.

But that didn’t happen.  Instead, Dominion Voting Systems will get more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, likely in cash.  The money is reportedly more than ten times the amount paid by the investment fund that owns Dominion paid for the company in 2018.  And when it comes down to it, the company was in the business of making money, not defending democracy.  (Yay, Citizens United, right?)

What it does, however, is it hurts Fox.  It hurts Fox a lot, and it may end up hurting the key people at Fox even more if a shareholders’ lawsuit against the directors and board members succeeds and they are held personally responsible for the financial losses.  It’s one thing one your company’s cash reserve goes down by three-quarters of a billion on paper; it’s another when you’re writing the check for $787 million. 

On the day when his employer settled a defamation lawsuit while admitting that his on-air statements were complete lies, Tucker Carlson is on a racist screed literally unlike any I’ve ever seen him on before.  He’s showing video of a white woman getting beaten up by a mob and a group of kids looting a gas station in Los Angeles.  While saying “we definitely don’t want” violence, Carlson shows video of riots, mob violence and attacks before demeaning “the change Barack Obama brought to America.”

Much to the chagrin of people who will one day sit around coffee shops and tell people how much purer movies looked on disc, streaming giant Netflix has announced it is fading out its original DVD-by-mail service, the Associated Press reports.

The last discs will be mailed September 29th according to the current plan to shut down the service, which had at least 1.1 million monthly subscribers over the last year, as it generated more than $148 million in revenue.  With more than 230 million streaming subscribers, Netflix grossed more than $30 billion in 2022, even as subscription growth for its streaming services slowed.

Barney Rubble body double and Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis’s assumed presidential candidacy is already hitting some rocky water, with major GOP donors pulling support.  But he expected to garner support during his trip to Washington, DC to meet with Republican members of Congress, Politico reports.

It did not go well.  Utah Senator Bob Lee, one of the listed co-sponsors of the event, was quick to dismiss the impression that he was supporting DeSantis, saying his sponsorship was not an endorsement.  Others downplayed their attendance.  “I support any person who wants to throw their hat in the ring,” Iowa Republican Randy Feenstra said as he entered the meeting.

Perhaps the coldest burn came from Texas Republican Congressman Lance “Don’t Call Me Dwight” Gooden from the amazingly gerrymandered Texas 5th Congressional District who tweeted a statement minutes after leaving the event:  an endorsement of indicted golf club administrator Donald Trump.