Raskin Exposes Patel’s Alleged FBI Slush Fund, Obama Calls Trump’s Iran Deal A Rerun, and Arizona Just Ended Big Tech’s Free Ride

Plus, a 2020 Trump election plot case refuses to die

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Let’s get into it.

OBAMA CALLS TRUMP’S IRAN “DEAL” A RERUN

For years, Trump told anyone who’d listen that former President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran agreement was the worst deal ever made. He ripped up the United States’ end of it in 2018. Then he launched an illegal war in February that has killed thousands and disrupted the world’s oil supply.

Now he’s struck a new “deal”—and the man who built the first one says it’s one and the same. “It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different, or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place,” Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts. A deal, Obama added, that had worked for years before Trump pulled out of it.

Behind closed doors, it’s worse. The CIA warned Trump that Iran’s private talks didn’t match what it was promising America. Trump destroyed the deal, started a war, and landed in a worse spot than where Obama left him.

PATEL’S ALLEGED FBI SLUSH FUND EXPOSED

Rep. Jamie Raskin alleges that FBI Director Kash Patel may be running a personal slush fund out of the bureau’s budget. In a blistering letter, Raskin lays out the details of how Patel could be handing tens of thousands in cash to the agents who guard him and the loyalists who carry out his orders.

Patel’s office, he says, has pushed out more than $1 million in “bonus” payments—nearly $8,000 a head every two weeks—to agents who’d already maxed out their legal salary. The accounts drained so fast that some payments bounced.

Raskin lays out two possibilities in his letter: either it’s “a corrupt attempt to slide cash to friends,” or payments made “to ensure silence” from agents who witness Patel’s alleged misconduct on the job.

“By issuing these side payments, your office may be knowingly breaking federal law,” Raskin wrote.

November is coming. And with it, subpoenas.

ARIZONA JUST TOLD BIG TECH: PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE

For more than a decade, tech giants have built over 150 data centers across Arizona—and paid next to nothing in sales taxes to do it. A $38 million tax exemption for data centers, signed into law in 2013, made Arizona one of the most attractive states in the country for an industry that drains local water supplies, strains power grids, and drives up utility bills for families.

On June 13, Gov. Katie Hobbs ended it, signing a new bipartisan budget that puts a three-year moratorium on new sales tax breaks for data centers. The Arizona Senate Democratic Caucus called it “the largest pause on tech-industry incentives anywhere in the nation.” Republicans voted for it too.

Hobbs had been direct about her goal: she wanted to make sure “data centers are working for Arizonans rather than the other way around.”

The people pushed. The governor listened. That’s how this is supposed to work.

TRUMP CAN’T PARDON HIS WAY OUT OF WISCONSIN

In 2020, three of Trump’s operatives tried to help him steal Wisconsin—his campaign attorney, his Election Day director, and a legal adviser who allegedly tricked ten Republicans into signing papers that falsely declared Trump the winner of a state he’d lost.

Everywhere else, the cases have been collapsing. Georgia’s and Michigan’s fake electors cases were dismissed. The federal case against Trump was dropped. Nevada’s and Arizona’s are both stumbling in court. The pattern is unmistakable: the powerful protecting the powerful.

Then there’s Wisconsin.

Democratic AG Josh Kaul filed his charges—and has refused to back down. On Tuesday, all three pleaded not guilty to eleven felony counts each, carrying up to six years apiece. Trump pardoned them federally—but he can’t pardon them for the state charges.

One prosecutor refused to walk away, and now three of Trump’s operatives are headed to trial. This case isn’t done. Neither are we.

We’re not a mailing list. We’re the resistance—a movement of millions, in every state, who decided a long time ago that we’d rather fight back than fold to Trump.

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Onward!

Scott

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