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Judge with intimate ties to Dem Party’s key Russia Hoax players behind latest anti-Trump decision

Judge with intimate ties to Dem Party’s key Russia Hoax players behind latest anti-Trump decision

The judge who ordered President Donald Trump‘s name removed from the Kennedy Center is married to an attorney who has represented a former anti-Trump FBI lawyer, served as counsel to the House Jan. 6 committee and currently represents former President Joe Biden — relationships that Trump blasted as clear conflicts of interest following the ruling. Trump claimed in a heated Truth Social post that U.S. District Court of D.C. Judge Christopher Cooper’s wife, Amy Jeffress, a former Obama-era Justice Department attorney turned top lawyer of Trump’, encouraged her husband to reject Trump’s Kennedy Center renovation plans and remove his name from the building. He pointed to Jeffress’ past and current clients, which include some of his most prominent critics, as evidence that she is “a Radical Left Democrat” who is influencing her husband to rule against him. “Trump Hating Judge wants to keep it open because his wife probably told him to do so!” Trump wrote of Cooper, referring to his rejection of Trump’s plans to close the Kennedy Center for two years for renovations. FEDERAL JUDGE ORDERS TRUMP’S NAME REMOVED FROM KENNEDY CENTER, SAYS ONLY CONGRESS CAN RENAME IT Cooper issued his ruling on May 29, finding that the Kennedy Center board exceeded its legal authority when it voted to rename the institution to include Trump’s name. He ruled that only Congress can change the institution’s name based on the Kennedy Center’s founding statute, which makes clear that the venue is dedicated to President John F. Kennedy. Trump also alleged Jeffress “doesn’t use the ‘Cooper’ name because they, as a couple, don’t want people to know that she has a Conflict of Interest with an important Judge.” The president pointed to Jeffress’ professional background, which included serving as a counselor to Attorney General Eric Holder during the Obama administration. Trump and his allies have accused the Obama administration of politicizing intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 election and promoting allegations of ties between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. The FBI named its investigation into Russia’s alleged ties to Trump’s campaign Crossfire Hurricane. WHO IS NORM EISEN? MEET THE ANTI-TRUMP ATTORNEY REPPING FBI AGENTS SUING THE DOJ Thousands of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok, a senior investigator on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe, and his then-lover Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and adviser to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, became public in 2018. Although Page was not involved in the Russia investigation, the pair’s anti-Trump messages prompted criticism from some who argued the exchanges revealed political bias within the FBI. Jeffress represented Page during congressional scrutiny of the FBI’s handling of its investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for official State Department business. Page was not involved in the Clinton email investigation itself. She later represented Page again in a civil lawsuit against the FBI and the Justice Department, in which she argued that the disclosure of the text messages was improper. Years later, Jeffress served as outside counsel to the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, advising members on legal issues involving evidence, witness testimony and executive privilege claims. The committee examined the causes of the riot, efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and Trump’s actions leading up to the attack. TRUMP’S NAME ADDED TO KENNEDY CENTER FOLLOWING UNANIMOUS BOARD VOTE TO RENAME HISTORIC BUILDING The president also pointed to Jeffress’ law firm, Hecker Fink LLP, formerly known as Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, which represented E. Jean Carroll in her civil lawsuit against him. Since July 2025, Jeffress has served as Biden’s personal attorney and is representing the former president in a lawsuit seeking to block the Justice Department from releasing transcripts and audio recordings of Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents. “Amy is totally wired into the Left System, from her husband down, and it is impossible for me to be treated fairly,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He has a total Conflict of Interest, and should be brought up on charges for not revealing these facts.” Appointed by President Barack Obama, Cooper has served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C., since 2014. The criticism facing Cooper is not the first time he has been accused by Trump or his allies of having a potential conflict of interest. Cooper previously drew scrutiny during Special Counsel John Durham’s prosecution of former Clinton campaign-linked attorney Michael Sussmann, with critics arguing that he should have recused himself because his wife, attorney Amy Jeffress, represented former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a figure tied to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The Sussmann case stemmed from Durham’s probe into the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. Prosecutors alleged that Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was not acting on behalf of any clients when he presented allegations about a purported communications channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa Bank during the 2016 election. Cooper rejected Sussmann’s effort to dismiss the case before trial and allowed Durham’s prosecution to proceed, but a jury ultimately acquitted Sussmann in May 2022 after a two-week trial overseen by Cooper. Fox News Digital reached out to Cooper’s office, Jeffress, a representative for former President Joe Biden, Page, a representative for Garland, and Hecker Fink LLP for comment. Cooper and Jeffress have been married since 1999. Their wedding was officiated by former Biden Justice Department Attorney General Merrick Garland, who at the time was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

GOP leverages ICE funding package to make Trump’s controversial $2B fund ‘never exist’

GOP leverages ICE funding package to make Trump’s controversial B fund ‘never exist’

Senate Republicans may need more convincing from the Trump administration that the “anti-weaponization” fund is officially dead, even after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spelled out its doom on Tuesday.  Many Republicans demanded that the administration make it crystal clear that not only was the nearly $2 billion fund done, but that it would never come back. And at stake is a multibillion package to fund immigration enforcement operations.  During a closed-door meeting Tuesday, Senate Republican leadership assured members that Blanche would lay out the fate of the fund, and hoped that it would be enough to quell dissent among the ranks.  TRUMP ADMIN BACKS OFF CONTROVERSIAL $2B FUND, CLEARING PATH FOR STALLED GOP IMMIGRATION BILL And he did during a hearing in the House, where he repeatedly said that the administration was not moving forward with the fund. “The reasons for the fund, I think, remain as important as they were before, but we are not moving forward with the fund,” Blanche said.  The fund was announced last month as part of a settlement between the Trump family and the Internal Revenue Service, and pitched as a mechanism for people who felt they were targeted by the government to get a financial kickback. Republicans were concerned that without proper guardrails, people convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill could access the taxpayer cash flow. Some in the GOP wanted President Donald Trump to come out and officially kill the fund.  “I assume if Blanche is saying it, the president must agree,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said. GOP DEMANDS TRUMP KILL CONTROVERSIAL $2B FUND BEFORE REVIVING ICE FUNDING PACKAGE But some Republicans want an even more concrete show from the administration that it’s actually dead and gone.  “I’m not sure that’s gonna be good enough for some people,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said.  Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., contended that if the administration really meant it, it would support legislation to permanently prevent the fund from returning in any form. He planned to push an amendment to the broader, roughly $70 billion reconciliation package that would make sure of that. “I just feel like we just need to do a Wayback Machine and just pretend like this never existed and take whatever steps are necessary to make sure it can never exist or disperse,” Tillis said. “Not in the current environment.”  Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that Blanche previewed his remarks on the fund to him, and hoped that it would be enough to unite the fractured Republicans to move forward with budget reconciliation this week.  GOP’S PRIMED FOR PRIMARY SEASON PAYBACK ON TRUMP’S MOST AMBITIOUS, CONTROVERSIAL POLICY “I think, as I’ve conveyed to you before, everything comes down to a function of math,” Thune said. “It’s do we have the votes? Do we have 50 votes to execute on getting a bill like that across the floor? Because we have to have Republicans hanging together in order to do that.” Republican leadership hopes to launch the process on Wednesday in order to get the roughly $70 billion package to the House by the end of the week.  Some Republicans are hopeful that it will be enough to get the process back on track.  “If it goes like we’re told it will go, well, there’s a reasonable possibility, then we will move pretty quickly to the reconciliation,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said.  Part of the issue is that if Republicans aren’t on the same page, several Democratic amendments that would both tackle the fund and halt momentum for the package could pass. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was one of several critics of the fund, and she hoped that Blanche would make it “crystal clear that the administration is not going to proceed” with the issue. Whether she or others in the same camp would vote against amendments remained an open question.  “I’m not going to predict what’s gonna happen to a very fluid situation,” Collins said.