
Trump outraises Biden again – as billionaire donors unleash vast sums to shape race for the White House
CNN
President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party raised more than $85 million in May, his campaign said Thursday – trailing his rival, former President Donald Trump, and the Republican National Committee for the second month in a row.
President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party raised more than $85 million in May, his campaign said Thursday – trailing his rival, former President Donald Trump, and the Republican National Committee for the second month in a row. Trump’s political ambitions, meanwhile, received a huge boost in May with a $50 million cash infusion to a super PAC backing his campaign from Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and heir to a banking fortune who has emerged as one of the single largest donors in this year’s presidential election. The May haul by Biden’s team marked the second-best grassroots fundraising month for the president this cycle, his campaign said, but it fell well short of the staggering $141 million that Trump and his political operation said it collected last month – fueled by tens of millions of dollars collected in the immediate aftermath of his May 30 conviction in a New York criminal case for falsifying business records. Biden’s campaign said Thursday that his committees entered June with a massive $212 million cash stockpile. The Trump campaign has not yet disclosed cash-on-hand figures for all of its committees. Campaigns don’t have to do so until next month, but Federal Election Commission filings late Thursday offered a partial picture, showing Trump’s main committee with more than $116.5 million in cash reserves at May 31 while Biden’s main campaign account held $91.6 million. It underscores how much Trump’s fundraising success in recent months has eroded the financial advantage Biden held for much of the campaign cycle. The Biden team said its war chest is helping build a substantial campaign infrastructure and touted its hiring, together with the Democratic Party, of more than 1,000 staffers across battleground states.

The aircraft used in the US military’s first strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a strike which has drawn intense scrutiny and resulted in numerous Congressional briefings, was painted as a civilian aircraft and was part of a closely guarded classified program, sources familiar with the program told CNN. Its use “immediately drew scrutiny and real concerns” from lawmakers, one of the sources familiar said, and legislators began asking questions about the aircraft during briefings in September.

DOJ pleads with lawyers to get through ‘grind’ of Epstein files as criticism of redactions continues
“It is a grind,” the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division said in an email. “While we certainly encourage aggressive overachievers, we need reviewers to hit the 1,000-page mark each day.”

A new classified legal opinion produced by the Justice Department argues that President Donald Trump was not limited by domestic law when approving the US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro because of his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief and that he is not constrained by international law when it comes to carrying out law enforcement operations overseas, according to sources who have read the memo.

Former Navy sailor sentenced to 16 years for selling information about ships to Chinese intelligence
A former US Navy sailor convicted of selling technical and operating manuals for ships and operating systems to an intelligence officer working for China was sentenced Monday to more than 16 years in prison, prosecutors said.









