Citizen Free Press
@CitizenFreePres
Criminal Fed Governor Lisa Cook called Trump a fascist in 2020.
She has two criminal referrals pending against her now.
Hearing on her firing is this morning.
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1961443293083922573
Judge in Lisa Cook case appointed by Biden has already ruled against Trump on deportations
US District Judge Jia Cobb is a Biden appointee who recently ruled against Trump on deportations.
The judge who will immediately weigh President Donald Trump’s effort to fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook has already pushed back against one of his other signature efforts to expand presidential power: mass deportation.
Cook’s lawsuit Thursday was randomly assigned to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington, D.C., by Joe Biden in 2021. Cobb, a former public defender, was Biden’s first appointment to Washington’s district court, which has 15 full-time judges.
In a ruling earlier this month, Cobb blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to rapidly deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had fled violence or oppression in their home countries. The immigrants had previously been permitted to enter or remain temporarily in the U.S. under a program known as parole.
“Will they be summarily removed from a country that — as they are swept up at checkpoints and outside courtrooms, often by plainclothes officers without explanation or charges — may look to them more and more like the countries from which they tried to escape?” Cobb wrote in an 84-page decision against the deportation effort.
It was Cobb’s most pointed pushback to a Trump policy, but it wasn’t her first brush with the legal tumult that has defined Trump’s second term.
She also heard a pair of legal challenges to Trump Justice Department appointees’ demand for the names of all FBI personnel who worked on investigations related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.
At Cobb’s urging, the two sides worked out a compromise under which DOJ agreed not to distribute the names outside the federal government without advance notice. The FBI agents who brought the lawsuits wanted to use them to seek long-term protection against their names being disclosed and retaliation for their work, but Cobb dismissed the cases last month at the Trump administration’s request.
Although Trump appointees have fired dozens of FBI agents who played roles in Jan. 6 investigations, Cobb said the possibility of DOJ publicly identifying the agents on the list was “too speculative” for the lawsuits to continue. Still, she seemed skeptical about the administration’s crusade against those involved in Jan. 6 probes, pressing DOJ lawyers to explain “what was so wrong” about how those probes were conducted.
Now, Cobb will preside over the first phase of Cook’s lawsuit seeking to remain as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors despite Trump’s attempt to fire her. Cobb set a quick hearing for Friday at 10 a.m. to consider Cook’s request for an immediate order blocking Trump’s attempted ouster.
But Cobb almost certainly won’t have the final say on the matter. Any ruling she issues on Trump’s bid to fire Cook will likely be appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — and after that, the Supreme Court.
Prior to Trump’s second inauguration, Cobb’s most high-profile case was the trial and conviction of Jan. 6 defendant Ryan Samsel, who was the first rioter to charge across police lines, precipitating the broader attack on the Capitol. Prosecutors had urged Cobb to put Samsel in prison for 20 years, citing his multiple acts of violence that day and continued defiance — but his February sentencing was called off after Trump issued a blanket pardon to all Jan. 6 rioters.
Stephen Brennwald, a criminal defense attorney who has handled several complicated cases before Cobb — including one of Samsel’s co-defendants — said he views Cobb as an “even-handed” judge who makes litigants feel heard even when she rules against them.
“While I certainly haven’t won all of the motions I’ve filed or the arguments I’ve made, you never left thinking that she was unfair or biased or anything other than doing her best to make the right call,” Brennwald said.
Cobb, 45, is a graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard Law School. After working at the D.C. Public Defender Service early in her career, she joined a Washington-area firm that primarily handles employment-related litigation.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/28/federal-reserve-lawsuit-judge-jia-cobb-00533672
Arizona Poll: Andy Biggs trails Katie Hobbs for governor
Political Polls
@PpollingNumbers
New - Governor Poll - Arizona
🔵 Hobbs 40%
🔴 Robson 38%
🔵 Hobbs 39%
🔴 Biggs 37%
Noble predictive #B - RV - 8/18
https://x.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1961212245372711290
Lisa Cook hearing ends, judge likely to issue decision next week
-A court hearing in Washington, D.C., ended without a judge ruling on a request by Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook to temporarily bar President Donald Trump from firing her.
-Trump pointed to suggestions that Cook committed mortgage fraud when he said he would remove her from the Fed, which sets interest rates that he wants cut.
-Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte made a second criminal referral to the Justice Department against Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the board.
A court hearing on Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook’s request that President Donald Trump be temporarily barred from firing her while her lawsuit against the president plays out ended Friday without a judge issuing a ruling.
Cook’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, at that hearing blasted the Department of Justice’s argument that Trump had legal cause to remove Cook because of suggestions by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte that she committed mortgage fraud in documents for two properties in Atlanta and Ann Arbor, Michigan, before joining the Fed.
“You can’t have Director Pulte’s crazy midnight tweets be the cause,” Lowell told Judge Jia Cobb in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
Pulte, who was appointed by Trump, has served as an attack dog for the president in his efforts to pressure the Fed to cut interest rates.
Cook, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other members of the seven-seat Fed board so far have resisted that pressure.
Powell asked Cobb to keep in place the “status quo” — Cook remaining in her job — for now, until a final decision by the judge on whether Trump has grounds to fire her.
That could keep Cook on the board for its upcoming meetings on whether to hold interest rates steady or cut them.
A DOJ lawyer told Cobb that it is up to Trump’s “discretion” to determine if he has cause to fire a Fed governor.
The Federal Reserve Act says a president can only remove a Fed governor for cause.
Cook’s lawsuit against Trump challenging her removal could end with the Supreme Court determining if Trump had cause in her case, and potentially set the standard for what constitutes cause for future presidents.
Cobb said at the beginning of the hearing, “This case obviously raises some important questions that may be of first impression, particularly as it applies to this board.”
If Trump succeeds in firing Cook, he would be on track to have nominated a majority the Fed board.
Cobb ended the hearing after two hours of arguments without ruling on Cook’s request for a temporary restraining order that would keep her in her Senate-confirmed position indefinitely. Cook, whose term ends in January 2038, became the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board after she was nominated by then-President Joe Biden in 2022.
It is not clear when Cobb will issue a decision on Cook’s request for a TRO.
The judge suggested that the attorneys for both sides confer and determine whether they want her to first rule on the restraining order request, or whether they want her to issue a decision on potential requests for a preliminary injunction or summary judgment to restrict Trump from booting her from the Fed.
Cobb also said she was giving the parties more time to supplement in writing the arguments they made in open court on Friday.
The Fed, in a court filing before the hearing, said it would not make arguments on the merits of Cook’s request for a temporary restraining order.
But the central bank also asked Cobb to issue a “prompt ruling” on her motion.
The Fed also told Cobb that it intends “to follow any order this Court issues.”
The Fed Board of Governors and Powell were named as co-defendants Thursday in Cook’s suit against Trump challenging the legality of his purported firing of her.
Powell and the Fed board were sued only to the extent that at some point they might execute Trump’s wishes.
Trump has said he wants to fire Cook because of FHFA chief Pulte’s prior allegations that she potentially committed mortgage fraud in statements she made on documents related to the properties in Atlanta and Ann Arbor.
On Thursday night, Pulte said he had filed a second criminal referral against Cook with the Department of Justice related to a mortgage for a condominium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and alleged misrepresentations she made about that condo and the two other homes in government ethics filings during her time as a Fed governor.
Lowell on Friday called Pulte’s new referral “an obvious smear campaign aimed at discrediting Gov. Cook by a political operative who has taken to social media more than 30 times in the last two days and demanded her removal before any review of the facts or evidence.”
“Nothing in these vague, unsubstantiated allegations has any relevance to Gov Cook’s role at the Federal Reserve, and they in no way justify her removal from the Board,” Lowell said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/lisa-cook-trump-fed-powell-court-hearing.html
Greg Abbott
@GregAbbott_TX
Today, I signed the One Big Beautiful Map into law.
This map ensures fairer representation in Congress.
Texas will be more RED in Congress.
https://x.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1961456577078067685
The haters exhibit the same pattern: 'The Apprentice’ and ‘The Fallout’ producer accused by Feds of scamming $12 million
The many flimflams Robert Brown is accused of include a Ponzi scheme, a fake domestic terrorist group project and a COVID-19 testing con.
A former Los Angeles film producer who held key roles in several independent projects, including the Oscar-nominated young Donald Trump movie The Apprentice, has been arrested in South Carolina after a grand jury indicted him on charges of defrauding victims out of more than $12 million in schemes that included a Ponzi scheme, phony COVID-19 testing and misappropriating production funds.
David Raymond Brown, 39, has been charged with nine counts of wire fraud, 10 counts of transactional money laundering and two counts of aggravated identity theft in an indictment filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Brown had an initial court appearance in South Carolina on Wednesday following his arrest and is expected to be arraigned when he is returned in the coming weeks to California, where he lived in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles while allegedly defrauding two individual victims and bilking several film productions with a grab bag of flimflams.
From December 2021 through this year, Brown allegedly defrauded film production companies and the two victims mentioned but kept anonymous in the federal indictment by using an inflated status in the film industry to dupe them and transfer funds meant for production costs to his personal bank account, all to maintain his swish lifestyle. In addition to using the guise of filmmaking to dupe one victim, another individual was told funds handed to Brown were for real estate investments.
“Without the knowledge or authorization of the Film Production Companies…Brown misappropriated funds belonging to the film production companies by causing funds to be transferred from the film production companies’ bank and prepaid debit CASHét card accounts to bank and CASHét Card accounts he controlled,” the indictment read.
The funds allegedly embezzled by Brown were then used to keep up his upper-crust L.A. lifestyle. Purchases, according to the federal indictment, included a 2025 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon and multiple Tesla vehicles, a house for his mother, as well as to pay his mortgage, install a pool and a Subzero freezer, pay for private school tuition and to put $70,000 into surrogacy services.
To embezzle some of the funds, Brown is accused in the indictment of setting up a Studio City-based company he called Hollywood Covid Testing LLC, which he would use to bill productions for COVID-19 tests “never rendered or already paid for, including by using false or duplicative invoices,” according to a press release from the Department Of Justice on Wednesday. The alleged fraud scheme also involved an elaborate lie that saw $970,263 in investor cash being sent to an entity set up to make a never-produced film about the Symbionese Liberation Army and its members’ infamous kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
Brown is accused of running what was essentially a Ponzi scheme, on which the parties’ feds say he victimized, using funds he obtained from new victims, including Victim 2, to compensate one victimized Film Production Company. The indictment also accused him of intentionally submitting checks drawn on insufficient funds and allegedly passing off another person’s Internet Movie Database Page as his own to convince one victim of his industry bona fides.
Federal prosecutors also claim that Brown tricked a third party into signing backdated loan documents while withholding purported health insurance payments from employees’ payroll, while failing to maintain their health insurance coverage.
Brown is being detained at a jailhouse in Columbia, South Carolina. He will remain in custody until his next hearing, which is scheduled for Sept. 4. An email The Hollywood Reporter sent to his attorney Thursday afternoon was not immediately returned.
The DOJ notes that if convicted, Brown faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for each of the nine wire fraud counts, up to 10 years in federal prison for each money laundering count, and a mandatory two-year consecutive prison sentence for each aggravated identity theft count.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/the-apprentice-the-fallout-producer-accused-12-million-scam-1236356235/
U.S. Revokes Visas of Palestinian Officials Ahead of U.N. General Assembly
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is denying and revoking visas from members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, set to begin on Sept. 9.
“Before the PLO and PA can be considered partners for peace, they must consistently repudiate terrorism—including the October 7 [2023] massacre—and end incitement to terrorism in education, as required by U.S. law,” the State Department said in a statement released on Friday.
It's currently unclear if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is set to travel to New York to deliver an address at the General Assembly, is included in the restrictions.
The State Department insisted that the PA must end appeals to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), moves which the department called “attempts to bypass negotiations through international lawfare campaigns.”
The PA’s “appeals to the ICC and ICJ, and efforts to secure the unilateral recognition of a conjectural Palestinian state” have “contributed to Hamas’ refusal to release its hostages,” as well as the breakdown of cease-fire talks, said the State Department.
Israel has faced accusations of genocide at the ICJ, first presented by South Africa in December 2023, in a case that remains ongoing. Israel has strongly denied accusations of a genocide. The ICC previously issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour has reportedly commented on Rubio’s revocation of visas, telling U.N. reporters on Friday: “We will see exactly what it means and how it applies to any of our delegation, and we will respond accordingly.”
The PA mission to the U.N. will receive waivers from the international organization, per the U.N. Headquarters Agreement, and the U.S. is said to be “open to re-engagement that is consistent with our laws.”
The action from the State Department comes amid pledges from a number of countries to recognize a Palestinian state, should Israel not meet certain conditions. In July, U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the U.K. would formally recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. General Assembly in September, unless Israel implements a cease-fire and commits to a two-state solution. France, Australia, and Canada are among the countries that have issued similar statements.
The State Department previously shared its intention to impose sanctions that would deny visas to officials of the PA, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank, and members of the PLO.
“It is in our national security interests to impose consequences and hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments and undermining the prospects for peace,” read the July 31 statement.
Read More: Israelis Call for Urgent Cease-Fire and Return of Hostages in Nationwide ‘Day of Struggle’ Protests
Meanwhile, Israel announced on Friday morning that it will no longer apply “tactical pauses in military activity” in Gaza City, declaring it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
In a statement shared via social media, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it “continues supporting humanitarian efforts while conducting operations to protect Israel.” The IDF did not confirm how long these measures will last and declined to comment further when contacted by TIME.
“We have begun preliminary operations and the initial stages of the attack on Gaza City, and we are currently operating with great force on the outskirts of the city,” said IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee via a social media update.
Tactical pauses have previously been applied to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, typically suspending operations anywhere between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. to allow aid and food supplies into Gaza City. Israel previously issued displacement orders in the area, ahead of its military expansion.
The IDF’s expansion of its military operations, part of a new war plan approved by the Israeli Security Cabinet earlier this month, has been widely criticized by global leaders and humanitarian organizations.
The U.N. warned on Thursday that should the Israeli war plan in Gaza go ahead in its entirety, it could reduce the territory’s hospital bed capacity by half.
Last week, a U.N.-backed food security body confirmed that famine is taking place in Gaza City for the first time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. The report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said that famine was also expected in the areas of Deir al Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September.
The IDF also confirmed Friday it had recovered the body of deceased hostage Ilan Weiss. The 56-year-old was killed when Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7 2023. Weiss’ wife and daughter were taken hostage and later released during a temporary cease-fire in November 2023.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it shares the “profound grief of the Weiss family.”
“There are no words to express the depth of this pain. The hostages have no time. We must bring them all home, now,” the forum emphasized.
Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the remains of another hostage, whose identity has not yet been released, were also recovered.
“Together with all citizens of Israel, my wife and I convey our heartfelt condolences to the dear families and share in their deep sorrow,” said Netanyahu.
The Israel-Hamas war started after Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing over 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. Over 63,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
In the absence of independent monitoring on the ground, the ministry is the primary source for casualty data relied upon by humanitarian groups, journalists, and international bodies. Its figures do not differentiate between civilians and combatants and cannot be independently verified by TIME. Data from the IDF suggests a Palestinian civilian death rate of 83%.
https://time.com/7313434/united-states-revokes-visas-palestinian-officials-united-nations-assembly/