(DCNF)—Less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office, prosecutors refuse to back down from using dead cases to attack him.
In New York, Judge Juan Merchan scheduled Trump’s sentencing for Friday — a decision Trump is urging the Supreme Court to block. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pushing to release special counsel Jack Smith’s final report following Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling blocking its release.
“There is no question that Merrick Garland is going to release Special Counsel Jack Smith’s final report, quite possibly for the same reason that Judge Juan Merchan is going to sentence President-Elect Trump this Friday — to get in a last-minute dig just before Trump’s inauguration,” John Malcolm, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Malcolm noted it remains an “open question” whether Smith has authority to write the report after Cannon found his appointment unconstitutional.
The DOJ indicated in a filing Wednesday that the first part of Smith’s report concerning the 2020 election investigation would be released, noting it is “in furtherance of the public interest in informing a co-equal branch and the public regarding this significant matter.”
Smith already handed off his entire report, which consists of two volumes, to Attorney General Merrick Garland, according to a filing at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Garland determined he would not release volume two of the report, which focuses on Trump’s classified documents case, while proceedings for Trump’s co-defendants are ongoing.
Both of Smith’s cases against Trump were dismissed after he won the election, though the DOJ did not drop charges against Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case.
Cannon blocked the DOJ on Tuesday from releasing Smith’s report until the Eleventh Circuit issues a ruling.
Trump, who is no longer directly a party to the case, filed an amicus brief Wednesday arguing that Garland “cannot issue a report of an unconstitutionally appointed and funded Special Counsel.” Releasing the final report now would also violate the Presidential Transition Act, his attorneys wrote in the brief.
“In sum, public release of the Final Report threatens the same, if not more, stigma and opprobrium as an indictment and, thus, represents an equal, if not greater, infringement on the exercise of the executive power, and completely disregards Congress’s intent in the Presidential Transition Act,” the brief explains.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky told the DCNF that “transparency is vital, but it must not come at the cost of justice or constitutional order.”
“In light of the unique national interests at stake, including the ongoing presidential transition and the need to restore public confidence, the Attorney General should exercise prudence and defer any release until a proper review is conducted by the incoming administration,” he told the DCNF.
Cherkasky said he is also concerned about “the emergency nature of rushing a complex and novel legal issue.”
“There is no pulling back the report once it is released, and to do so before the court, and appellate courts are able to weigh in with due time and consideration is shortsighted and obviously political given the few days AG Garland has before he leaves his post,” he said. ‘This is lawfare of the highest order in cases that have been dismissed. It is outrageous to think Smith didn’t seek to release this report while the cases were pending (prosecutors rarely would release such because it gives away their strategy).”
Fromer AG Meese & Professor Calabresi file amicus in Trump's petition to Supreme Court for Stay. Denying stay just got that much harder.
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) January 9, 2025
‘One County Prosecutor’
If Trump wants to avoid a sentencing hearing in New York set for 9:30 a.m. EST on Friday, the Supreme Court will likely need to rule on Thursday, after his other effort to block the hearing was shot down by a judge on New York’s highest court.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg urged the justices Thursday to let the hearing proceed, writing there is “no basis” for taking the “extraordinary step of intervening in a pending state criminal trial.”
“It is axiomatic that there is only one President at a time,” Bragg’s brief states. “Non employees of the government do not exercise any official function that would be impaired by the conclusion of a criminal case against a private citizen for private conduct.”
Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Northwestern law professor Steven G. Calabresi wrote in an amicus brief that it is “intolerable that one county prosecutor in one State could besmirch a President’s reputation and reduce his effectiveness in carrying out his extensive duties at this time.”
“Today, moreover, there are fifty states with roughly 2,300 county prosecutors, some of them quite partisan,” they wrote. “This Court should not allow such a prosecutor to impair the President’s or congressionally certified President-Elect’s ability to perform his
duties.”
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]]>(DCNF)—An emotional mother personally impacted by the wildfires confronted Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom Thursday and begged him to answer how he will help Californians affected by the natural disaster.
The woman, whose daughter’s school burned down, approached the governor in her neighborhood demanding to know how he plans to aid the communities devastated by the five destructive fires that rapidly spread across parts of Los Angeles. Newsom claimed he was attempting to call President Joe Biden, leading the woman to bluntly tell him she did not believe he was about to call the president.
“Can I hear it? Because I don’t believe it,” the woman said. Newsom claimed that he tried “five times” to make the call, prompting the mother to ask why the president was not taking his calls.
“It’s not going through, so I have to get cell service,” Newsom explained.
“Let’s get it, let’s get it, I want to be here when you call the president,” she responded.
“I appreciate [that], I’m doing that right now and we need to get immediate reimbursements, individual assistance to help you. I’m devastated for you, I’m so sorry, especially for your daughter,” Newsom said.
The woman then asked Newsom why the state’s hydrants lacked the water needed to put out the fires. The governor assured her that he is taking all of the necessary steps to provide Californians with the necessary resources before cutting the conversation short and stepping into his vehicle.
“What are you gonna do? I would fill up [the hydrants] personally you know that,” she said. “I would fill up all of the hydrants myself. But would you do that?”
“I would do whatever I can,” the governor replied.
“But you’re not,” she interjected. “I see — do you know there’s water dripping over there, governor? There’s water coming out of there, you can use it.”
“I appreciate that, I’m gonna make the call to address everything I can right now, including making sure people are safe,” the governor answered.
An analysis from OpenTheBooks, a government transparency organization, said that Los Angeles lacked the budget to fund adequate fire hydrants despite the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) having received substantial taxpayer-funded salaries. Several fire hydrants in the state ran dry as the LADWP and fire department officials attempted to combat the flames that destroyed thousands of homes, neighborhoods and communities in the area.
— Hailey Grace Gomez (@haileyggomez) January 9, 2025
Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley committed significant resources to an internal “racial equity plan” and other diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
Over 100,000 people had to evacuate their homes and at least five people have died, though officials believe the death toll is higher, according to the Los Angeles Times. About 1,000 homes in Pacific Palisades and the same number of residences in Eaton Canyon perished after the areas were set ablaze.
Residents told the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday that they did not expect their homes and personal belongings to completely perish, and that they received notice to evacuate without any prior warning.
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]]>(DCNF)—Political analyst Mark Halperin expressed confidence on Wednesday that there was additional “coordination” behind the legal cases against President-elect Donald Trump than what is currently known.
Trump faced four criminal cases during the 2024 election, with only one resulting in a conviction before the November election. Halperin, on “The Morning Meeting,” suggested that Trump’s lawyers, some of whom he has tapped to positions within the Department of Justice (DOJ), will likely investigate how the charges against him unfolded, predicting that further troubling information may be uncovered.
“The victories that Trump had in lawfare, they weren’t perfect, right? He did get one conviction, but mostly they had victories. And I think a lot of people in the media and Democrats say it was because the judges were corrupt and the Supreme Court was corrupt and the Trump people used unhanded legal tactics,” Halperin said. “That legal team, just from a competency point of view, did an extraordinary job, and some of them are going into the Justice Department now. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how they use their newfound government power, particularly related to [special counsel] Jack Smith.”
Following his election victory, Trump announced in Truth Social posts that he named several of his defense attorneys to key DOJ roles in his upcoming administration. He tapped Todd Blanche to be deputy attorney general, Emil Bove to be principal associate deputy attorney general and Dean John Sauer to be solicitor general.
“But the other piece of that equation is I have zero doubt that there was more coordination on lawfare that [than] has been reported. I have zero doubt of that, and I think it could be extensively more. And I think that we may see a congressional investigation about that,” Halperin continued. “We may see a Justice Department investigation. Maybe we’ll see someone in the media look into it, but I think that lawfare is not going to age well.”
“And again, just from a zeros and ones results point of view, that legal team did an incredible job for Donald Trump. Cost him millions, but did an incredible job. And by the way, he’s now in this term unburdened by that, at least so far, in terms of investigations,” he added. “And the Democrats have a real credibility problem, not just with the MAGA base, but with a lot of Americans because of what was done. That’s my view on lawfare.”
Matthew Colangelo, who was President Joe Biden’s acting associate attorney general, spent two years in Biden’s DOJ before joining the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as senior counsel in December 2022.
Colangelo was appointed while Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was still investigating Trump in relation to a $130,000 payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence regarding an alleged affair. He delivered opening statements for the prosecution against Trump in April, arguing that he falsified business records corresponding to the payment as part of a broader initiative to “corrupt the 2016 election.”
A Manhattan jury convicted Trump in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records pertaining to the nondisclosure agreement with Daniels and the president-elect is set to be sentenced either in-person or virtually on Jan. 10.
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]]>(DCNF)—Dr. Emmanuel “Manny” Hostin, the longtime husband of “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, is being accused of fraudulently billing an insurance company in a new lawsuit filed in December, the Daily Mail first reported Tuesday.
Hostin, an orthopedic surgeon, is among nearly 200 defendants named in one of the largest RICO cases filed in New York, according to the Daily Mail. Hostin, along with the other defendants, are accused of performing fraudulent healthcare services and billing American Transit, an insurance firm that covers taxi companies and Uber drivers, in exchange for “kickbacks and/or other compensation which were disguised as dividends or other cash distributions,” according to the lawsuit.
Sunny Hostin's surgeon husband Emmanuel accused of insurance fraud in bombshell lawsuit https://t.co/LE77GwP15U pic.twitter.com/7uSl5U0NJY
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) January 7, 2025
The lawsuit, filed on Dec. 17, states that Hostin has been the owner of Hostin Orthopaedics in New York City since February 2006, according to the lawsuit. He allegedly “knowingly provided fraudulent medical and other healthcare services” and billed the insurance company.
“Defendant Hostin is the record owner of Hostin Orthopaedics and purportedly provided examinations to Covered Persons through Hostin Orthopaedics, and fraudulently billed American Transit for medical and other healthcare services, pursuant to a fraudulent predetermined treatment protocol irrespective of medical necessity in exchange for kickbacks and/or other financial compensation paid by one or more of the Controllers and/or other entities owned, controlled, and operated by them and/or one or more of the John Does 2 through 20 or ABC Corporations 1 through 20,” the lawsuit stated.
William Natbony, an attorney representing the insurance company, said his client is fighting “no fault fraud” which has reportedly become a major problem in the state of New York.
“American Transit filed a lawsuit as part of its statutory responsibility to fight such fraud,” Natbony said.
Daniel Thwaites, an attorney for Hostin, said his client denies all of the allegations and called the lawsuit a “blanket, scattershot, meritless lawsuit by a near-bankrupt insurance carrier,” according to the Daily Mail. The attorney accused the insurance company of “abusing the legal system to limit and restrict healthcare benefits” to its customers.
“[The lawsuit] is meant to intimidate and harass doctors from collecting for care given to American Transit insureds and their passengers,” Thwaites said.
The lawsuit accused Hostin of seeing two patients in January 2023 who were involved in “low impact” collisions that would have caused “no more than soft tissue injuries,” according to the Daily Mail. The surgeon reportedly performed arthroscopic surgery on the patients within two months without checking to see if they had recovered through less invasive care.
The insurance company pointed fingers at the “No-Fault Law,” a New York law from 1974 which requires insurers to pay up to $50,000 for medical expenses for those hurt in car accidents regardless of who is at fault, for the reported rise in “rampant” insurance fraud, the Daily Mail reported. American Transit is seeking $450 million in damages, according to the Daily Mail.
Hostin’s wife, Sunny, has previously worked as a federal prosecutor and an attorney for the Justice Department before joining “The View” as a co-host in 2016.
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]]>(DCNF)—Political analyst Mark Halperin explained Monday how Democrats may be failing to fully grasp why Vice President Kamala Harris lost to President-elect Donald Trump in November.
Democratic strategist James Carville argued in a New York Times opinion piece Thursday that Harris’ loss was solely attributable to economic factors. Halperin, on “2WAY Tonight,” said Carville represents the prevailing sentiment of Democrats, but contended that they are overlooking other critical factors, potentially setting themselves up for failure in 2028.
“On the Democratic side, I think that there is still a search for a comfortable place to land on saying why was Trump able to win. And you’ve got the dominant school, which James Carville gave voice to over the weekend, that said it was all the economy,” Halperin said. “The economy was bad, voters did not buy what was being sold by [President] Joe Biden first and then by Kamala Harris. And Trump, people remembered the Trump economy more fondly.”
“I credit that as a big part of what happened, but I think if Democrats want to go with just that, they’re missing what a lot of my sources say are also extremely important variables, some with applicability to the future, some not, just with applicability towards historical understanding,” he continued. “There’s almost no public discussion amongst Democrats about the role Joe Biden played and Kamala Harris played in her defeat. And you saw [Democratic Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer on ‘Meet the Press’ basically deny that there was an acuity problem, deny that Biden’s acuity problem played a role in the loss. These are extremely important parts of why I believe, and my sources believe, Harris lost.”
Schumer also said Sunday on ‘Meet the Press’ that voters not “realiz[ing] how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years played a key role in his party’s losses.
“If you just focus on the economy and leave out Afghanistan and the forever wars, you leave out immigration, you leave out the cultural issues. I’ve said it before: [Former President Ronald] Reagan’s three-legged stool to me is the right metaphor here — national security, economics and cultural/social issues,” Halperin added. “And so the Carville school says we just didn’t talk about the economy well enough and that’s basically what Schumer said too.”
“Even if you go a step further and say it’s not just a comms problem, ‘we don’t have the right policies that resonate on economics,’ even then, my sources that I trust in terms of their judgment, they don’t have what I believe is a global view of what happened,” he continued. “And of course, the only way to come up with a solution to not lose the next presidential election, even though it won’t be against Donald Trump, is to understand what happened in 2024.”
Comedian Bill Maher on Sunday challenged actor Jon Cryer when he asserted Harris’ defeat was due to inflation, arguing that Cryer’s reasoning would lead Democrats to further losses.
“You can blame them all you want. I believe, again, that there was a worldwide reaction to the inflation bump after COVID … As I said, Americans hate inflation,” Cryer said.
“You keep telling yourself that and you’ll lose the next one too,” Maher fired back.
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]]>(DCNF)—CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings chuckled when former Democratic South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers suggested on Monday that President-elect Donald Trump is inheriting a secure border from President Joe Biden.
Biden presided over the highest level of net migration in American history, according to The New York Times’ December analysis of government data. Despite this, Sellers on “CNN News Central,” claimed that net migration under Biden has dropped to a lower level than it was before Trump’s first term.
“If you look at the fact that something like net migration at the border, [it] is lower than it was even before Donald Trump took office,” Sellers said, prompting Jennings to laugh and shake his head.
Jennings apologized but suggested that “the idea that immigration is under control” is laughable.
“Two things can be true,” CNN anchor Kate Bolduan chimed in. “The border needs to be secured further and his numbers can be accurate.”
Annual net migration, the difference between individuals entering and departing the U.S., averaged 2.4 million from 2021 to 2023, according to the NYT.
Since Biden unveiled an executive order in June restricting the number of illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border, encounters between ports of entry have declined, according to a September press release by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Biden administration touted the reduction in illegal border crossings, despite the latest immigration data at the time also showing that over 500,000 foreign nationals have been flown into the nation via a mass parole program.
Trump has committed to oversee a large-scale deportation operation during his second term. Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan in December told the Daily Caller News Foundation that any individual or jurisdiction that directly impedes the work of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent should prepare to face repercussions.
“There are federal statutes on the books for knowingly concealing and harboring an illegal alien away from ICE officers,” Homan told the DCNF. “There are statutes on the books about impeding federal law enforcement officers – they’re all felonies.”
“Now these sanctuary cities cannot assist – ok, that’s fine. They can stand aside, that’s fine, but they cannot cross that line,” he continued. “If they cross that line, we’ll be asking the attorney’s office to consider prosecution.”
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]]>(DCNF)—Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is reportedly expected to resign from office as early as Monday in the wake of a public dispute with President-elect Donald Trump and plummeting popularity among even those in his own party, three sources familiar with the matter told The Globe and Mail.The sources, who were not named, told The Globe and Mail that they do not know the exact time that he will make the move, but that it will be before he faces his Liberal Party peers at a key meeting. The decision would come in the wake of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s resignation, which was prompted in part by Trudeau’s spat with Trump over tariff policy.
He would end his nine-year tenure as PM with a 33% approval rating, with citizens citing cost of living and immigration anxieties as top issues, according to an Ipsos poll taken in September.
Trudeau faced calls for his resignation from over 40 members of parliament before his decision, according to the New York Post Dec. 17. An interim PM would be selected from within the Liberal Party in the time before the next election.
Under the Canadian system, an election must be called by Oct. 20 next year, according to Reuters. However, a vote of no confidence by parliament could trigger an election sooner.
Trudeau’s tenure has been rife with scandals, including revelations in 2019 of his use of blackface at a party in 2001 and allegations of judicial interference in 2019 where he allegedly instructed former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to snuff out a corruption charge against Quebec mega-contractor SNC-Lavalin.
The rival Conservative party is almost certainly set for a majority in parliament when the next election takes place, leading the liberals by a whopping 21 points, according to CBC news polling updated Dec. 16. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre will likely take over as PM in place of Trudeau’s Liberal party replacement in the next election.
Among Canadian voters top concerns are living costs, housing affordability, health care, the economy and immigration, according to an Abacus Data poll taken June 20 to June 25.
The median home price in Canada increased by a staggering 227% from 2003 to 2023 while annual earnings only increased by 74.3%, according to an analysis by NerdWallet.
The immigration issue in Canada is also intimately tied to a housing shortage, as Poilievre explained to CBC in August, Canada “cannot grow the population at three times the rate of the housing stock, as Trudeau has been doing.”
Trudeau has also faced criticism for his extreme gun control laws during his tenure, with his government outlawing “assault weapons” in 2020 while continuously adding new firearms to the ban list, according to the NRA. He also passed a carbon tax which drew the ire of conservatives and the general populace, according to CBC News.
Trudeau’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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]]>(DCNF)—Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that voters “didn’t realize how much” the Democratic Party had done for them over the last four years heading into November’s elections, claiming it played a key role in his party’s demise.
President-elect Donald Trump scored a historic win for Republicans in November, winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote, while Vice President Kamala Harris failed to even match the numbers President Joe Biden had received in 2020. On “Meet the Press,” NBC host Kristen Welker questioned Schumer about his thoughts on the “root cause” of the Democrats’ loss, noting that Democratic strategist James Carville had blamed the state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration.
“I told my caucus and I’ll say it here, too. We should regard this election, certainly it was a loss, but it’s also a challenge, and we did some things right against very severe headwinds. We kept four of those seven contested Democratic seats, but we did some things wrong and we have to look in the mirror and see what we did wrong,” Schumer said.
“Then there’s some things we didn’t do that we should have done. One of the things we have to do is we must focus on the working families of America,” Schumer added. “We believe in them and we passed all kinds of legislation that helped them with the infrastructure bill which made our economy stronger and employed lots of people.”
Following Harris’ loss to Trump, Democratic lawmakers and political pundits questioned the pushback against their party from voters.
Election results showed that Trump not only gained 2.5 million more votes than in 2020, but also dealt a serious blow to Democrats’ hold on certain slices of the electorate, as Harris earned 7 million fewer votes than Biden in the 2020 race, according to The New York Times. While the vice president may have found some counties where she met or exceeded Biden’s vote totals, she failed to match Trump’s gains, falling short in three of the seven key swing states and in 80% of counties nationwide.
Schumer continued to list how Democrats helped push through the CHIPS Plus Act in 2022, a bill that included $52 billion for semiconductor manufacturing through 2025, $200 billion for federal science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) research and tax credits for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. The Democratic Senate majority leader additionally noted his party’s push to lower the cost of prescription drugs, a point Biden touted during his 2024 campaign.
The lawmaker went on to admit to Welker that while Democrats failed to show “empathy and concern,” voters also “didn’t realize” how the party had cared for them, stating that it’s an area Democrats will focus on in the future.
“But all too often Kristen we talked about the mechanics of the legislation and the details of the legislation and we really didn’t show the kind of empathy and concern to average or show enough of it to average working families who didn’t realize how much we had done and how much we care for them,” Schumer continued.
“So what we’re going to do is spend a lot of time talking to working families showing them how much we care about them and not just talk about legislation, but talk about the conditions that have made so many working families worried about their futures,” Schumer said. “That’s going to be a significant change, and obviously it will make a difference.”
After Biden announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race and instead endorsed Harris in July 2024, some Democrats questioned whether the party would hold a primary, with major figures like former President Barack Obama initially withholding their endorsement of the vice president. However, despite never winning any delegates, Harris secured enough support from Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates to become the party’s presumptive presidential nominee two days after Biden withdrew from the race.
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]]>(DCNF)—The lame duck Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a rule in December to curb overdraft penalties in what experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation is an example of government overreach that will ravage low-income Americans.
The CFPB — an agency that is considered the brainchild of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren — finalized the rule just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, with the aim of forcing banks to either cap overdraft fees at $5, far less than the $35 average, or to provide the overdraft as a form of credit rather than a penalty. While the policy’s stated aim is to increase transparency and protect American depositors, experts told the DCNF it will force banks to implement more stringent rules on bank accounts, limiting access to credit and financial services for low-income Americans, and pushing more borrowers to turn to payday lenders, who typically charge far higher interest rates.
“This is a classic case of government overreach with regulators having no idea how private business works,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “These new regulations would eliminate certain services and impose stricter rules on bank accounts predominantly held by low-income folks. If those people need an extension of credit because they don’t have sufficient funds to meet an immediate expense, they’ll be driven to even more costly payday lenders.”
While typical credit card annual percentage rates range from 15% to 30%, and personal loans are even lower, payday lenders often charge annual interest rates of anywhere from 300% to 500%, according to Mayo Employees Federal Credit Union. In 2022, 17% of households with checking accounts reported that they or someone in their family paid an overdraft fee, with households with incomes under $30,000 twice as likely to report at least one overdraft as those with incomes of $100,000 or more.
American household debt stood at a record high of nearly $18 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2024, increasing by nearly $4 trillion from when President Joe Biden took office in the first quarter of 2021, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit card balances have also surged since the COVID-19 pandemic, with American households holding $1.17 trillion in credit card debt in the third quarter of 2024, up from $770 billion in the first quarter of 2021.
.@SenatorTimScott's statement on the @CFPB's final rule capping overdraft fees: pic.twitter.com/cwg3hrLPqk
— U.S. Senate Banking Committee GOP (@BankingGOP) December 12, 2024
CFPB claims it has the legal authority to implement the regulation on the grounds overdrafts are loans and not penalties — an argument Erik Jaffe, partner at law firm Schaerr | Jaffe LLP, described to the DCNF as a “stretch.”
“The CFPB was given authority to regulate certain circumstances of consumer lending. As a result, the question is whether or not an overdraft on your checking account constitutes a short-term loan,” Jaffe told the DCNF. “It seems like quite the stretch. Banks charge customers a fee on overdrafts. The fee is not interest, as the length of time you take to pay back the fee does not change how much you owe. Interest must have a time component to it. It’s not like banks are giving customers with overdrafts money over time. They are just doing a courtesy of not bouncing a charge and embarrassing the customer.”
Jaffe also pointed out that the CFPB contradicts itself by attempting to re-classify overdrafts as a form of lending, while simultaneously permitting banks to charge overdraft penalties so long as they are under a certain dollar amount: “If the only way the CFPB has power to regulate overdrafts is by treating it as a loan, then why do they get to regulate the amount of penalty? If they concede its a penalty, then it is not within their purview. There’s an internal inconsistency here.”
The overdraft rule incurred immediate legal pushback following its finalization, with the American Bankers Association (ABA) filing a motion in the Southern District of Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit for a preliminary injunction on Dec. 12. Jaffe suggested legal challenges like the one from the ABA could be successful, particularly after the Supreme Court voted 6-3 in June to overturn Chevron deference — a legal theory that provided unelected bureaucrats with significant leeway to interpret statutory ambiguities.
“We no longer defer to an agency when they say ‘if you squint really hard this statute means I can do whatever the heck I want,’” Jaffe told the DCNF. “This CFPB rule seems to smell a bit like that. The agency appears to be saying ‘if we squint just right, overdrafts look like loans, and so we have the authority to regulate them.’ The courts will take it upon themselves to determine if this is the most natural reading, and will likely conclude it is not.”
Outside of the courts, Republican lawmakers have taken aim at the rule, claiming it will limit access to credit and describing it as an example of “midnight rulemaking” by the outgoing Biden administration.
“As I’ve said repeatedly, lawful and contractually agreed upon payment incentives promote financial discipline and responsibility and protect access to important financial services,” incoming Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott of North Carolina wrote following the finalization of the rule on Dec. 12. “With just over a month until the next administration takes over, Director [Rohit] Chopra should never have finalized this rule in the first place, and I look forward to working with the next CFPB Director to advance policies that prioritize consumers over political talking points.”
Incoming House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill of Arkansas echoed Scott’s sentiment in a Dec. 23 statement: “We told federal agencies — including the CFPB — to put their ‘pens down’ and stop all midnight rulemaking. Director Chopra blatantly disregarded our request by finalizing this rule. Capping overdraft services is another form of government price controls that hurts consumers who deserve financial protections and greater choice.”
Chopra is a longtime ally of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, helping her establish the CFPB following the passage of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Warren was instrumental in creating the CFPB, with former President Barack Obama describing the agency as “Elizabeth’s idea.”
“I also want to thank Elizabeth Warren not only for her extraordinary work standing up the new agency over the past year, but also for her many years of impassioned leadership, and her fierce defense of a simple idea: ordinary people deserve to be treated fairly and honestly in their financial dealings,” Obama said in a July 2011 speech touting the then-fledgling agency. “This agency was Elizabeth’s idea, and through sheer force of will, intelligence, and a bottomless well of energy, she has made, and will continue to make, a profound and positive difference for our country.”
Peter Earle, senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF the rule was the latest in a long line of “regulatory overreach” from the Biden administration.
“Capping overdraft fees by regulatory fiat is yet another example of regulatory overreach from the Biden administration, as it interrupts the pricing mechanism that reflects the costs and risks of providing overdraft services,” Earle said. “It’s not the first time, by far, that the outgoing administration has assumed that government knows better than private enterprises, consumers, and the price system, undermining the voluntary, cooperative commerce that drives competition and innovation.”
The CFPB and Warren’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
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]]>(DCNF)—Criminal defense attorney Arthur Aidala ignited a debate Thursday night when he reminded former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois that Democrats pursued President-elect Donald Trump with multiple legal probes.
President Joe Biden awarded former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming the Presidential Citizens’ Medal for her role in a House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building. Walsh urged Biden to pardon Cheney in order to “protect” her from the incoming Trump administration, prompting Aidala to point out how the Biden administration targeted Trump.
“Joe Biden should try to pardon as many people as possible to protect from a guy who said, ‘I want to be an authoritarian,’” Walsh said, prompting Aidala to respond, “I know, but, congressman, his — the Democratic administration just went after Trump and his whole family. His whole family.”
“Wait, wait,” Walsh said, with CNN host Abby Phillip asking, “Hang on. What do you mean, the Democratic administration? What are you talking about?”
When panelist Cari Champion asked who had “gone after” Trump, the panel laughed.
“Last I looked, Joe Biden is a Democrat. Last I looked, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, is a Democrat,” Aidala responded. “They hired a special prosecutor who went after him in several jurisdictions. The Democratic Manhattan D.A. went after him. The Democratic attorney general of the state of New York went after him.”
Trump faced multiple legal battles, including efforts to throw him off the ballot for the presidential election, a criminal trial in Manhattan during which a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30.
Trump was also indicted by special counsel Jack Smith on charges based on allegations involving classified documents and efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also secured an indictment on state charges over Trump’s efforts to contest the results in Georgia in 2020.
“The Democrats went after Donald Trump and his entire family,” Aidala said, prompting former Hillary Clinton campaign aide Amanda Litman to say, “It was not President Joe Biden saying, ‘I’m going to put Donald Trump…’”
“It’s his administration. It’s his administration. And it’s his entire family,” Aidala responded. “Ivanka had to testify. Donald Jr. had to testify. Eric had to testify.”