Former Congressman Blows The Whistle On Blackmail And Honeypots In Congress

In a candid interview with Human Events editor Jack Posobiec, former Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) alleged that blackmail and sexual honeypot operations are far more prevalent than the American public is aware of.

Cawthorn, who was elected to represent North Carolina's 11th congressional district at just 25 years old in 2020, described the typical path these lurrid situations take. It often begins at donor dinners or late-night votes, when members unwind with drinks or head back toward Capitol Hill. While many lawmakers prefer socializing with fellow congressmen to avoid complications with staffers or outside interests, invitations can quickly turn strangely personal.

"Normally, the way I found that these things start getting off the ground is that it starts out—you’re maybe at a donor dinner or getting dinner after a late night of votes,” Cawthorn said. "Then, you know, everyone has friends inside of Congress, so you start hanging out with friends. Maybe you’re grabbing drinks, or on the way back to Capitol Hill, heading back to your homes."

"Then you start building these relationships, and most congressmen like to hang out with other congressmen, just because there are so many problems when you hang out with staffers or people with different angles in other parts of the Beltway, the former lawmaker continued. "I will tell you, normally, the way I came across this is that people start inviting me and saying, “Hey, why don’t you come back? My wife would love to hang out with you, and we can see what could be going on here. I think we’d have a really good time if we all got together in this way.”

"Then you start piecing it together and say, “Wait a minute, what kind of invitation is this? This sounds really weird. What do you mean leave my phone at the house?” That doesn’t make any sense—these random things they’re saying. It becomes very clear what they’re looking for. That’s the big one—“check your phone at the door,” that kind of thing,” he added.

WATCH: Madison Cawthorn explains how honeytrapping operations work in US Congress

"Once they have you on video they own you"pic.twitter.com/OVGCx4a7s9

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) April 15, 2026

Cawthorn told Posobiec that he made it clear he had zero interest in such activities.

"I’ve got a phenomenal life. I was only 25 years old when I was in Congress, so that didn’t interest me whatsoever. I thought the majority of people in the United States were very cognizant of that. So I came out and talked about it, and they tried to destroy me for it,” Cawthorn said.

Cawthorn lost his bid for reelection in the 2022 North Carolina Republican primary, falling to state Sen. Chuck Edwards (R), who later went on to win the general election.

"I’ll tell you, there were 16 people that I really hold responsible - the architects of trying to take down my political career,” Cawthorn explained. "I want you to ask yourselves: out of all the people who came out against me or sent funds to make sure I was pushed out of Congress, where are those people now?”

"I’m very happy that I was able to take the majority of them down, or that the majority of them are now out of office or have terrible personal lives at this point. But I will tell you, there are so many people inside Washington, D.C., that have much worse on them than what’s going on inside of this video,” he concluded.

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Former Congressman Blows The Whistle On Blackmail And Honeypots In Congress

Does Trump Know Something We Don't About Potential SCOTUS Vacancies?

Authored by Matt Margolis via PJMedia,com,

The midterm elections are coming up in November, and Democrats are generally favored to win the House, while the Senate is kind of a coin flip. While it would suck for Democrats to win the House because they’ll almost certainly find some bogus pretext to impeach President Donald Trump, there’s potentially more at stake regarding control of the Senate, including implications for confirming judges and potentially filling any potential Supreme Court vacancies.

No retirements have been announced, but speculation is mounting, and I’m starting to wonder if Trump knows vacancies are coming.

In a recent interview with Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo, Trump confirmed he has a shortlist of potential nominees ready to go — and he's prepared to fill as many as three seats if the opportunity arises.

"In theory, it's two — you just read the statistics — it could be two, could be three, could be one," Trump said.

"I don't know. I'm prepared to do it. But when you mention Alito, he is a great justice."

He added, "He does what's right for the country. It's the law, and he goes by it as much as anybody, but he gets to the point."

High praise from a president who has been, let's say, less enthusiastic about some of his own past nominees.

According to Fox News Digital, "Trump's remarks sharpen the stakes around any potential vacancy, as the president has signaled he is ready to seize the opportunity to deepen the court’s conservative majority. With retirement speculation around Alito and Republicans eyeing the window before the 2026 midterms, the prospect of an opening is already putting fresh focus on succession politics." 

Rumors about Alito, 76, potentially retiring have grown because of his age, his two-decade tenure on the bench and speculation that he may want to make sure a conservative successor is confirmed by the current Republican-led Senate, especially before the upcoming midterm elections in which Republicans are at risk of losing or seeing a diminished majority.

The rumors were further fueled when it was revealed Alito was treated last month for dehydration after becoming ill at a Federalist Society dinner. A Supreme Court spokesperson clarified at the time that the justice was "thoroughly checked" and returned to the bench the following Monday.

A source close to Alito insists he is not stepping down this term and is in the process of hiring the rest of his clerks for the next term. So at least for now, it sounds like he's not going anywhere.

Yet, Trump is ready with a shortlist of replacements? Is that a tell that he knows something we don’t?

It could be. Or it’s just being prepared.

After watching some of his own nominees drift from his expectations on high-profile rulings, you can be certain he'll be far more deliberate this time around. Whatever seats open up, expect Trump to treat the selection process with a level of scrutiny he may not have applied before.

The bigger picture here is worth appreciating.

No president since Ronald Reagan has reshaped the Supreme Court the way Trump has. His first three appointments — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — built the current 6-3 conservative majority. Trump may have an opportunity to secure a conservative majority for decades to come.

The question is, does he know that he will?

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California Supreme Court Disbars Former Trump Attorney For Aiding Challenge Of 2020 Election Results

Authored by Brad Jones via The Epoch Times,

The California Supreme Court decided to disbar former Trump attorney John Eastman over his aiding the president in challenging the 2020 presidential election results.

The court has not yet handed down an opinion to explain the April 15 decision, which affirmed the California Bar court’s recommendation for disbarment for alleged attorney ethics violations.

Eastman, a former Chapman University law professor, gained national attention for advising President Donald Trump on constitutional challenges to election procedures in several battleground states after the president alleged widespread election fraud.

The California decision is not the end of the line for Eastman. He can still practice law in the U.S. Supreme Court and possibly in another state.

“Federal courts are supposed to let me keep practicing, and the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed me to continue practicing, even while I’ve been placed on inactive status [in] California,” he said.

Eastman told The Epoch Times the state court’s decision is “outrageous” and “Orwellian.”

“What’s happening here to our institutions that have been captured by hard line, political, weaponized activists needs to be addressed. I was hopeful that the state Supreme Court would do that, but they’ve obviously punted,” he said.

“And so, it’s now up to the U.S. Supreme Court to fix this metastasization of the weaponization problem.”

Eastman said his attorney will file a certiorari petition, which is a formal request asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state court’s decision “because of the First Amendment violations that it represents.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that “professional speech does not get lesser First Amendment protection than anybody else’s speech,” Eastman said.

“And yet, what the court has done here is basically said ... I don’t get the same First Amendment protection that the man on the street gets because I was representing a client,” he said.

Eastman claims he is a victim of “lawfare” and was “debanked” over the controversy, which he said is “obviously partisan in nature.”

George Cardona, the chief trial counsel of the State Bar of California, alleged in a June 14 statement that Eastman violated his fundamental obligation to be truthful and uphold the rule of law “when, at the behest of his client, now-President Donald Trump, he engaged in a calculated campaign to falsely undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election, which then-candidate Donald Trump lost.”

Cardona alleged that Eastman “lied to courts,” then-Vice President Mike Pence, and the American people.

Randall Miller, an attorney with the Miller Waxler law firm who represents Eastman, criticized the decision in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

“The California Supreme Court has allowed to stand a State Bar Court recommendation that we contend departs from longstanding United States Supreme Court precedent protecting First Amendment rights, especially in the attorney discipline context,” Miller wrote.

“We disagree with that outcome and believe it raises pivotal constitutional concerns regarding the limits of state regulation of attorney speech,” he wrote.

“We will seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court to repudiate this threat to the rule of law and our nation’s adversarial system of justice.”

Deborah Pauly, an attorney with the LEX REX Institute and longtime conservative activist in Orange County, Calif., told The Epoch Times in a text message that the California Supreme Court “rubber-stamped the Bar Court’s recommendation.”

“California is trying to silence anyone who endeavors to protect and defend our Constitution from the swamp,” she said.

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California Supreme Court Disbars Former Trump Attorney For Aiding Challenge Of 2020 Election Results

Russia Vows To 'Fill China's Energy Resource Gap' Amid Hormuz Crisis In Lavrov-Xi Meeting

At a moment it remains a serious open question over just how vulnerable China is to the Hormuz Strait crisis, and now with the US-imposed US naval blockade of the vital oil transit waterway, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is in Beijing pledging energy support to China. 

Lavrov met with President Xi Jinping on Wednesday, during which Xi urged China and Russia to "give full play to the advantages of geographic proximity and complementarity, deepen all-round cooperation and raise the resilience of each other's development."

Russia remains China's top energy supplier. "Both sides should maintain strategic focus, trust each other, support each other, develop together," Xi continued, according to a Chinese state media readout.

via Russian Foreign Ministry

Lavrov in turn told Xi that Chinese-Russian relations play a "stabilizing role in world affairs" at a time of global "chaos and turmoil." This has been a consistent theme on which relations and trust have been built between Beijing and Moscow going back to the start of the Ukraine war over four years ago.

Importantly, after the meeting the Russian foreign minister announced to a press conference that Moscow stands ready to increase energy supplies to China.

"Russia can certainly fill the resource gap that has arisen in China and other countries interested in working with us on an equal and mutually beneficial basis," Lavrov stated.

The two-day Lavrov visit is toward laying the groundwork for an upcoming summit between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It's expected for the first half of this year, but likely after Trump's upcoming May 14-15 summit with the Chinese leader.

The Hormuz crisis is a threat to Chinese energy given Asia's largest power still depends heavily on global supply routes it does not fully control. While Beijing has for many years sought to diversify through pipelines from Russia and Central Asia, the reality is that those projects take years to build and remain far too limited to replace the volume of oil moving through Hormuz.

However, there's a strong counterargument pushing back against the assumption that Trump's Iran moves will ultimately squeeze and devastate China. Alongside Russia coming to Beijing's side with its recently unsanctioned oil, there are also these aspects to consider:

While China is to some extent dependent on Gulf oil, so is the rest of Asia. While the United States might be insulated from some of the worst consequences of the Hormuz closure, the economies of our Asian allies are not. Asian economies are among the most dependent on Middle Eastern oil, with South Korea receiving around 70 percent and Japan receiving a whopping 95 percent of their oil from the Middle East. The Council on Foreign Relations notes that in 2024, 84 percent of the oil and 83 percent of LNG shipped through Hormuz were bound for Asia. That is not a targeted squeeze. Instead, such a move looks to be made without much heed to Asia at all, hitting the very states Washington is supposedly positioning against Beijing.

China is actually one of the best-positioned countries in Asia to handle this exact crisis because of existing stockpiles, diversified supply chains, a coal-dependent electric grid, and pipeline alternatives. While China is vulnerable, it is more insulated than most of Asia, only receiving around 20 percent of its oil from Hormuz.

There's a certain irony in the fact that an early element of blowback from the Iran war was that Washington scrambled to remove sanctions on Russian crude oil transiting the high seas, to bat down soaring global oil prices, and yet it is this very unsanctioned oil flow which will benefit China.

And the 'unintended consequences' continue to trickle over. The American Conservative writes, "This damage to our Pacific allies is not theoretical. Across Asia, partner governments are already scrambling as their economies face the worst crisis in decades. Asian nations are shortening workweeks and implementing fuel controls, disrupting their economies as tension mounts. Many Asian economies have turned to Russia amid this turmoil, bolstering the economy of another supposed U.S. enemy."

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Russia Vows To 'Fill China's Energy Resource Gap' Amid Hormuz Crisis In Lavrov-Xi Meeting

Federal Judge Temporarily Allows Pentagon To Enforce Press Restrictions

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal court on April 13 temporarily allowed the Trump administration to enforce its media access restrictions at the Pentagon after blocking the policy last month.

The Department of War logo at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on March 10, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the federal government’s request for a 14-day administrative stay of his March 20 order blocking the restrictions.

Friedman did not provide reasons for his decision, which stops his own prior ruling blocking the policy from going into effect for now.

The government had asked for the 14-day stay to allow the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to consider the Department of War’s appeal of the March 20 decision. In that ruling, Friedman issued a permanent injunction preventing the department from enforcing the challenged restrictions.

The Department of War tightened its rules for the media in September 2025 after officials said reporters were roaming the halls of the Pentagon, jeopardizing national security.

The new rules stated that soliciting non-public information from department personnel or encouraging employees to break the law “falls outside the scope of protected newsgathering activities.” They also stated that reporters would be denied press passes if officials determined they posed a safety or security risk.

The New York Times, which filed a lawsuit late last year to block the policy, previously claimed restricting journalists’ access to the Pentagon building and its employees was unconstitutional.

The media outlet said the policy ran afoul of the First Amendment by limiting “journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”

In his March 20 ruling, Friedman wrote that the drafters of the First Amendment “believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech.”

“That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years,“ he said. “It must not be abandoned now.”

“We’ve been through, in my lifetime ... the Vietnam War, where the public, I think it’s fair to say, was lied to about a lot of things,” the judge said. “We’ve been through 9/11. We’ve been through the Kuwait situation, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay.”

The judge also said at the time that the department could not show that it would be harmed by the cancellation of the policy, whose “true purpose and practical effect” was “to weed out disfavored journalists—those who were not, in the Department’s view, ‘on board and willing to serve,’—and replace them with news entities that are.”

The Department of War’s initial policy required media outlets to sign agreements vowing not to solicit unauthorized information from Pentagon officials at the risk of losing their press credentials.

After Friedman issued his ruling on March 20, the Pentagon instituted a new policy restoring credentials for some reporters while requiring that any journalists who enter the building be accompanied by an escort. It also, among other things, changed the prior policy’s language restricting the solicitation of unauthorized or non-public information. Instead, it prohibited the “encouraging, inducing, or requesting” disclosure of such information.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell reacted to Friedman’s new stay order.

Parnell said in a post on X that the department will seek an emergency stay of the initial injunction “to preserve the security of the Pentagon during the pendency of the appeal.”

“Journalists do not have unescorted access to the building but will continue to have press credentials and access to all press briefings, press conferences, and interviews,” he said.

New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander told The Epoch Times that the media organization will be opposing the department’s motion for a stay from the D.C. circuit court.

Jacob Burg contributed to this report.

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Federal Judge Temporarily Allows Pentagon To Enforce Press Restrictions