by Steve Benen | May 14, 2026 | Criminal Justice, Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
In late 2024, when federal prosecutors secured an indictment against Gautam Adani, it wasn’t just another case. Adani, with a net worth of $104 billion, is India’s richest man with unparalleled influence in his home country, making the criminal indictment a matter of geopolitical significance.
In the United States, the Justice Department nevertheless concluded that he had allegedly overseen a bribery scheme, which he and his team lied about while trying to raise money from American investors.
According to new reporting from The New York Times, however, Donald Trump’s DOJ is prepared to abandon the case:
Now, according to several people with knowledge of the case, the Justice Department is planning to drop the charges altogether.
The reversal came after the Indian billionaire, Gautam Adani, hired a new legal team led by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., one of President Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-chairman of the prominent firm Sullivan & Cromwell.
The Times’ article, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, added that the billionaire’s defense lawyer met directly with Justice Department officials last month, and he went through a series of slides intended to show what he characterized as weaknesses in the case.
One of the slides, however, stood out: “If prosecutors dropped the charges, Mr. Adani would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy and create 15,000 jobs, echoing a pledge he had made in the wake of Mr. Trump’s election.”
The Times’ reporting went on to note that Adani’s lawyer also took steps to resolve related cases from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department, and “both of those agencies are now preparing to strike
by Steve Benen | May 14, 2026 | Justice Department, Maddowblog, News, Politics
Those looking for accountability for those who plotted against the 2020 presidential election have limited options. Donald Trump’s Justice Department, for example, certainly won’t punish lawyers who tried to overturn the will of the voters, and congressional Republicans won’t take an interest in holding them responsible, either.
But bar associations are another matter entirely. In fact, Jeffrey Clark, a key figure in Trump’s 2020 crusade to remain in the White House, is facing possible disbarment in the nation’s capital as a result of an investigation from the District of Columbia Bar.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump’s Justice Department this week filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar — not because it did something wrong, but because of its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, including Clark. The New York Times reported:
The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department.
In accompanying statements, Mr. Blanche accused the D.C. Bar of acting as a “blatantly partisan arm of leftist causes.”
The same lawsuit goes so far as to claim that lawyers who work for the administration should necessarily be considered above scrutiny by legal ethics officials.
In case that weren’t quite enough, Benjamin Weiss at CourtHouse News noticed the same lawsuit against the D.C. Bar references the Supreme Court’s ruling that extended immunity to presidential “official acts,” suggesting Blanche and his team believe lawyers in Trump’s
by Steve Benen | May 14, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
Donald Trump has railed against clean energy technology for years, and when targeting solar and wind power, the president has routinely repeated a familiar mistake: After sundown or when the wind isn’t blowing, those energy sources are practically useless.
Unfortunately, he’s not the only Republican who’s expressed confusion about this. The New Republic reported:
The secretary of the interior should presumably know how solar power generation works. On Wednesday, Doug Burgum showed that he does not.
Burgum was testifying before the House Natural Resources Committee, and exposed himself under questioning from Democratic Representative Jared Huffman, who brought up energy projects in Nevada.
The Cabinet secretary, toeing the GOP line, told Huffman that solar arrays “produce zero electricity” after sundown.
“Mr. Chairman, I request unanimous consent to enter in the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of: It’s a battery,” the California Democrat replied. “China’s figured it out. That’s why they’re cleaning our clock on clean energy.”
BURGUM: When the sun goes down, solar produces zero electricity HUFFMAN: I want to enter into the record this amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of — it’s a battery— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-13T15:05:00.011Z
The exchange was clearly embarrassing for Burgum — or at least it should have been. Later in the same congressional hearing, the interior secretary proceeded to tell Rep. Seth Magaziner, “When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, [solar and wind] produce nothing.”
The Rhode Island Democrat quickly reminded the witness, “We have these things called ‘batteries.’”
For some who are unfamiliar with the debate over energy policy, I can imagine why Burgum’s misguided rhetoric might have seemed vaguely
by Steve Benen | May 13, 2026 | Iran Tensions, Maddowblog, News, Politics
More than 10 weeks ago, when Donald Trump announced the start of the U.S. war with Iran in a prerecorded video filmed at his glorified country club in Florida, the president presented the public with five objectives. The first goal of the operation was to destroy Iran’s missiles and missile industry.
To hear the Republican administration tell it, that objective has been met. In March, for example, the president boasted that Iran’s missiles were “down to a scatter” and the Middle Eastern country had “nothing left in a military sense.” A month later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed the point, adding that Iran’s military capabilities have been rendered “combat-ineffective for years to come.”
There is reason to believe the president and his team have not just mismanaged an unnecessary war, they have also taken deliberate steps to deceive the public about its progress. The New York Times reported:
The Trump administration’s public portrayal of a shattered Iranian military is sharply at odds with what U.S. intelligence agencies are telling policymakers behind closed doors, according to classified assessments from early this month that show Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities.
Most alarming to some senior officials is evidence that Iran has restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites it maintains along the Strait of Hormuz, which could threaten American warships and oil tankers transiting the narrow waterway.
The Times’ report, which MS NOW has independently verified, went on to say the country “still fields about 70 percent of its mobile launchers across the country and has retained roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile.”
It
by Steve Benen | May 13, 2026 | 2026 election, Congress, Maddowblog, News, Politics
After Donald Trump returned to the White House, an unhealthy competition emerged among many of his most sycophantic congressional allies. The goal was, apparently, to see who could go the furthest to impress the president with proposals to glorify him in the most outlandish ways possible.
Some championed legislation to create a $250 bill that would feature Trump’s face; others pushed a similar bill to put Trump’s face on $100 bills. Some tried to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday, while others wanted to carve Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore. Some unveiled legislation to rename Washington Dulles International Airport after Trump, and others backed a bill to name the Washington, D.C., subway system after the president and his MAGA slogan.
While this might be difficult to believe, one House Republican even sponsored an actual bill to direct the National Institutes of Health to conduct research into “Trump derangement syndrome,” as if it were an actual ailment.
But these head-shaking proposals were all introduced in 2025, and now, as the midterm election cycle takes shape, the list of bills designed to venerate the incumbent president is still growing. The Hill reported:
Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R), who is in a tight reelection contest to keep his Senate seat, introduced legislation on Tuesday to dedicate a highway to President Trump.
“I am proud to introduce legislation to rename US Highway 287 as Interstate 47 in honor of our 47th President,” Cornyn wrote in a social media post. The highway is the second-longest U.S. route, spanning 1,791 miles from Choteau, Mont., to Port Arthur, Texas. GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.) co-sponsored the bill.
There’s no reason to believe the
by Steve Benen | May 12, 2026 | Maddowblog, News, Politics
On the first full day of Donald Trump’s second term, the president fired Adm. Linda Fagan, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, evicting her from her home with three hours’ notice. The fact that Fagan was a four-star admiral and the first woman to lead a branch of the military apparently meant very little to the Republican White House.
The developments were important on their own, but what followed was an unexpected controversy about who moved into Fagan’s waterfront Coast Guard home after her ouster: Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem filled the vacancy in the house previously designated for the Coast Guard commandant.
This was more common than it should have been. In fact, a variety of prominent Trump administration officials, including high-profile Cabinet secretaries such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have moved into homes usually reserved for high-ranking officers.
The New York Times reported in March, “The practice of moving public servants onto guarded military bases has no modern precedent. It raises some unsettling questions about the increase in violence against public figures, about the overall health of American democracy and, perhaps most obviously, about who is paying for this.”
But of particular interest were the circumstances surrounding Noem’s accommodations. In fact, interest in the South Dakota’s Republican’s housing took on a greater significance last summer when The Washington Post reported that the then-DHS secretary was “living for free in a military home typically reserved for the U.S. Coast Guard’s top admiral,” which in turn “raised concern within the agency.” (She denied the reporting, claiming she used “personal dollars” to pay rent.)
Making matters worse, The Wall
