A Defiant Jack Smith Responds to Jim Jordan’s Criminal Referral

by Cristina Laila Jul. 25, 2026 4:40 pm443 Comments

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Jack Smith’s lawyers responded to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan’s criminal referral.

On Wednesday evening House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) criminally referred former special counsel Jack Smith to the Justice Department for prosecution.

In a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Chairman Jordan said Jack Smith’s testimony included “intentionally false statements designed to obstruct the Committee’s oversight.”

“All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry. Mr. Smith, a former public servant, is no different,” Jordan wrote in a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Wednesday. “Yet his testimony included intentionally false statements designed to obstruct the Committee’s oversight.”

“His conduct can only be understood as an effort to thwart the Committee’s inquiry by intentionally making false statements and representations before Congress,” Jordan added, according to Fox News.

At issue is Jack Smith’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last December.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley last Tuesday revealed that Jack Smith spied on 44 members of Congress and actually read their text messages.

Jack Smith lied when asked if the records he requested included the contents of calls and texts.

WATCH:

A defiant Jack Smith pushed back on Jim Jordan on Friday.

“Mr. Smith agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee fully cognizant of the risk that President Trump’s Justice Department would try to find something in his testimony to serve as the basis for a criminal charge,” Jack Smith’s attorneys wrote in the letter obtained by Fox News.

“This risk existed not because Mr. Smith would make a false statement, but because President Trump has repeatedly ordered that Mr. Smith be prosecuted and jailed. That is not the rule of law. And it contravenes the principles that are critical to the vitality of our democracy.”

Jack Smith’s attorneys argued that the former special counsel was referring to the toll record subpoenas during the line of questioning.

“During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work as Special Counsel. This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law,” the lawyers wrote, according to Fox News.

“The toll record subpoenas that were the focus of those questions did not call for the content of text messages. The questions and answers preceding and following these exchanges also make clear that the focus of the questions was on the toll records subpoenas. Notably, the referral letter does not contest the truthfulness of Mr. Smith’s answers.”

Chairman Jordan blasted Jack Smith during an appearance on Fox News on Thursday morning.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/defiant-jack-smith-responds-jim-jordans-criminal-referral/

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale

"The world's best AI training data is setting on a shelf."

By Frank Landymore Published Jul 25, 2026 12:02 PM EDT Add Futurism

Traditionally, books have been good for two things: reading, and looking nice on a shelf.

But AI companies are interested in neither.

To those building large language models,books are nothing more than fodder to be devoured en masse before being spit out like fishbone. Often, they’re happy to use digital books —or even better, pirated digital books, as Meta has been accused of doing, and as Anthropic was forced to pay a $1.5 billion settlement to authorsfor also doing.

But many companies, including Anthropic,have turned to ingesting physical books instead, which they can buy countless used copies of on the cheap. According to the settled lawsuit, Anthropic used a hydraulic powered cutting machine to neatly remove the pages from the books it procured from book resellers and then scanned them using industrial-grade imaging equipment. In other words, it was literally ripping off authors’ books to train its AI.==

This process tookadvantage of a legal concept known as first-sale doctrine,which allows a buyer to do what they want with a purchase without the original copyright holder’s say-so. And since Anthropic was turning the original physical texts into digital ones — rather than redistributing them as new copies —a judge found this to be “transformative,” and therefore protected by fair use.

Now, as 404 Media reports, this practice has become prevalent enough that even well-established book sellers are looking to cash in on the AI boom. One called ISBNdb, which boasts the “world’s largest book database,” extolls that the “world’s best AI training data is setting on a shelf,” upholding these physical texts as uncorrupted by shoddy AI writing that’s already polluted so much of the internet (and indeed, newer books).

“Print books from the pre-LLM era are structurally guaranteed to be free of this contamination. That alone is a significant advantage,” it explains in an article on its website, as quoted by 404. “Physical books published before this date [pre-2022] are structurally clean of modern poisoning tools.”

Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps AI companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404.

As an added bonus, it also promisesAI companies that it’ll keep their purchases under wraps — nobody wants to end up in the spotlight like Anthropic and Meta, obviously — while clearly sounding aware about how incredibly shady the practice sounds.

“The optics problem is real,” ISBNdb’s site says.“‘AI company destroys two million books’ is not a headline that generates sympathy.”

One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs.He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found.

“I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” the bookseller told 404. “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell. I’ve been well-suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books. On the other hand,I don’t like the end-use, and I don’t like that uncommon books are being pulped.”

More antique books may be endangered. 404 noted how rare booksellers in the Netherlands are being inundated with bulk purchases they believe are being made by AI companies, though they can’t know for sure.

Similar suspicions are being felt all throughout the industry.Services like ISBNdb facilitate these bulk orders, keeping the AI buyers anonymous as promised. There may be strong hints thats a bulk order is for an AI lab, but booksellers can, for the most part, merely speculate.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books

Democratic Socialists Are Winning Big. Now They Want Action

The Democratic Socialists of America, after a string of election victories in New York, is eager to tax the rich and enact anti-Israel policies.

July 26, 2026Updated 9:41 a.m.1/3

On a sticky evening in July, leaders of the surging democratic socialist movement in New York City jumped onto Zoom to begin crafting the next phase of their campaign.

Democratic socialist candidates had just toppled five incumbents, capturing two House primaries in the city and a handful more in state legislative races. But with an off-cycle election year ahead, leaders in the city’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America were shifting their focus from winning votes to changing policy.

The group’s next order of business, its members agreed in the nearly hourlong Zoom, is topressure Gov. Kathy Hochul, a centrist Democrat, to raise income taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkerswhen the state Legislature convenes in Albany in January.

The group had failed to persuade Ms. Hochul to do so earlier this year,settling instead for a much more limited tax on multimillion-dollar second homes in New York City. But with its influence on the rise, the group believes that a broader tax-the-rich campaign may succeed next year, despite Ms. Hochul’s continued resistance.

“We brought the fight to Hochul to tax the rich last session when we had only nine socialists in the State Legislature,” Gustavo Gordillo, the co-leader of New York City’s D.S.A. chapter, said in an interview. “This cycle, our forces will be almost doubled, and there’s a whole new crew of progressive legislators who are going to demand what New Yorkers want, which is for Hochul to tax the rich.”

Since Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary win last year, the New York City D.S.A. chapter, active since the 1980s, said it has added more than 7,000 members. Its current membership of roughly 15,000 is spread across the city, often concentrated in gentrified pockets of Brooklyn and Queens (the so-called Commie Corridor), along with Upper Manhattan.

As the organization matures, it is confronting how to chart its path forward. Some members are laser-focused on drafting their most prominent political ally — Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — to run for president in 2028, sometimes putting them at odds with their national brethren. Others are pushing for a more expansive policy agenda, including a renewed focus on public safety, condemning Israel’s military actions through legislation and considering a public takeover of its largest utility company.

The city’s D.S.A. arm has 14 working groups focused on policy goals, but it has so far trained its focus on selecting political candidates and winning elections. Knocking on doors and building energy for elections have tended to be more central to the organization than in-the-weeds policy analysis.

“The organization feels that the sky’s the limit in New York City,” said Asad Dandia, the Brooklyn borough historian and a D.S.A. member. “There’s an understanding that D.S.A. has emerged as one of the major political players in New York City, and arguably the most powerful political organization in the five boroughs.”

Members of the D.S.A. will be making a renewed push to pass the “Not on Our Dime” bill, which would strip New York nonprofits of their tax-exempt status if their funds are used to support Israeli settlement activity. They are also trying to persuade lawmakers to introduce a bill that would penalize airlines that facilitate arms shipments to Israel from Kennedy International Airport. The chapter has also talked about increasing its focus on climate and energy — issues that can be difficult to mobilize voters around, though they have felt more urgent in a summer of heat waves and wildfires.

D.S.A. is part of a coalition of advocacy groups that is pushing for the state to build enough public renewable energy to power 12 million households. Far more ambitiously, members of the coalition have discussed pushing either the state or city to step in and take over Con Edison, with the aim of lowering utility bills and making the case that the public sector ought to run the grid, not the private sector. Such a plan would face major logistical and financial hurdles and is unlikely to get Ms. Hochul’s support.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/nyregion/dsa-tax-rich-hochul-mamdani.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0lA.ANhK.yDXHCvPaeOnl&smid=url-share