Truth Social SPAC reaches SEC settlement as Trump indictment … – The Independent

The White House has responded after a federal judge blocked key agencies within President Joe Biden’s administration from communicating with social media companies about certain online speech in an extraordinary ruling as part of an ongoing case that could have profound impacts on the First Amendment.

The preliminary injunction granted by Donald Trump-appointed US District Judge Terry A Doughty in Louisiana on 4 July prohibits the FBI and the US Department of Health and Human Services, among others, from speaking with platforms for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Read the White House’s response in The Independent:

President Joe Biden is set to speak momentarily at the White House to mark the 4th of July.

Moms for Liberty, a “parental rights” group that has sought to take over school boards in multiple states, is looking to expand those efforts across the country and to other education posts in 2024 and beyond. The effort is setting up for a clash with teachers unions and others on the left who view the group as a toxic presence in public schools.

The group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, said during its annual summit over the weekend in Philadelphia that Moms for Liberty will use its political action committee next year to engage in school board races nationwide. It also will “start endorsing at the state board level and elected superintendents.”

Her comments confirm that Moms for Liberty, which has spent its first two years inflaming school board meetings with aggressive complaints about instruction on systemic racism and gender identity in the classroom, is developing a larger strategy to overhaul education infrastructure across the country.

As the group has amassed widespread conservative support and donor funding, its focus on education ensures that even as voters turn their attention to the 2024 presidential race, school board elections will remain some of the most contentious political fights next year.

The federal prosecutor leading the investigation of President Joe Biden‘s son Hunter is pushing back against claims that he was blocked from pursuing criminal charges in Los Angeles and Washington and denies retaliating against an IRS official who disclosed details about the case.

In a two-page letter to House Republicans on Friday, U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware defended the lengthy investigation into Hunter Biden‘s financial dealings that ended last month with a plea with the Justice Department that likely spares Biden from time behind bars.

Weiss, who was named to that post by President Donald Trump and was kept on by the Biden administration, said in his letter that the department “did not retaliate” against Gary Shapley, an IRS agent who said the prosecutor helped block Shapley’s job promotion after the tax agency employee had reached out to congressional investigators about the Biden case.

Shapley is one of two IRS employees interviewed by Republicans pursuing investigations into nearly every facet of the younger Biden’s business dealings.

One of the investigating committees, the House Ways and Means Committee, voted to publicly disclose congressional testimony from the IRS employees shortly after the plea deal was announced June 20.

Former Vice President Mike Pence was a surprise guest this weekend at a rally in Paris, France, hosted by Iranian dissidents in support of overthrowing Iran’s regime.

Mr Pence, who’s running in the increasingly-crowded 2024 Republican primary, railed against the authoritarian government in Tehran and what he claimed were efforts by the Biden administration to revive the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran, the US, and several European countries. That deal was abandoned by the Trump administration who accused Tehran of violating the deal “in spirit”.

“Now, a new administration is threatening to unravel all of the progress we made in marinalising the tyrannical regime in Tehran,” Mr Pence claimed.

“They are working overtime to restore the Iran Nuclear Deal, putting Tehran back on the fast track to obtaining nuclear weapons.” The Independent has reached out to the White House for comment on those comments.

A former New York congressman who was pardoned by former president Donald Trump, is reportedly contemplating a run for the House once again, this time in Florida.

The former representative, Chris Collins, plead guilty in 2019 to conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He told WGRZ’s Scott Levin that he is planning to run for the seat currently held by Rep Byron Donalds should Mr Donalds vacate it to make a run for higher office.

If Mr Collins were to win election to the House in Florida, he would be the first person to represent two different states in Congress in more than five decades.

Federal prosecutors are nearing a decision on whether to charge Donald Trump and his associates with crimes related to their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and recently interviewd teh former president’s top attorney for that project as their investigation winds down.

Rudy Giuliani spoke to investigators in a voluntary interview in recent weeks, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, and is likely to be among the DoJ’s eventual targets for a criminal indictment if the agency goes forward with a case.

The Independent has more:

A financial firm linked to Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform has reached an $18m settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in order to bring an end to the investigation into its merger with the company.

The SEC had been looking into whether DWAC held talks with Truth Social’s parent company before going public, which would be a violation of certain antifraud provisions of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act.

Oliver O’Connell has the story:

Former President Donald Trump kicked off his Independence Day activities early on Tuesday by resharing a vulgar meme attacking Joe Biden and the people who voted for him.

Mr Trump took to his Truth Social website at roughly 2am to “re-truth” a post by another user consisting of an image containing the words: “81 million votes …. and I’ve never seen a pro Biden hat, shirt or flag in my life.”

The message repeats a common theme among the ex-president’s supporters, who frequently claim that he could not have lost the election because there were fewer open displays of mass support for the man who defeated him during the 2020 campaign.

Read more from Andrew Feinberg in The Independent:

Of course, Mr Trump did not imagine his comments about indicted presidents would apply to him – he made them when speaking in 2016 about his then-rival Hillary Clinton.

“We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial,” he told a rally in November 2016. “It would grind government to a halt.”

At another rally, Mr Trump mentioned the email server probe that dogged much of Ms Clinton’s presidential campaign, also suggesting that a potential indictment would wreak havoc in the White House.