Former President Donald Trump is returning to rally in a small New Jersey city that his campaign stiffed on a five-figure police and public safety bill in 2020.

Consider that a lesson learned for Wildwood, N.J.: This time, Trump's campaign needed to pay ahead of time for the rally Trump is hosting on Saturday at Wildwood Beach.

The Trump campaign paid $54,200 for public safety and clean-up costs ahead of Saturday's rally that's expected to draw thousands of visitors, NJ.com reported.

Lisa Fagan, public information officer for the city of Wildwood, N.J., confirmed to Raw Story that the Trump campaign paid $54,200 plus an additional $150 that "covers all event costs that the city might incur."
"We are working in tandem with the Secret Service who are running all security measures," Fagan said.

All city departments work together to support such an event, Fagan said.

“Take the politics out of it and people would bend over backward for this number of people to come to their town,” Wildwood Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr., a Republican and Trump supporter, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “We become national spotlight. They see the size of the beaches, they see the amusement parks we have to offer, our restaurants and hotels take a good hit.”

But that wasn’t the interesting part. Rather, it was Scott’s claims about his own victimization that stood out for me. Rolling Stone reported:

Standing outside Donald Trump’s criminal trial, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) suggested he, like Trump, was the victim of unfair political persecution — pointing to the Justice Department’s inquiry into his hospital chain, which paid $1.7 billion to resolve Medicare fraud charges.

“I’m fed up,” Scott told reporters. “I watched what happened to me and my company.”
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1788587131742617654

Though the article is no longer online, The Miami Herald reported in 2010 that federal investigators “found that Scott took part in business practices at Columbia/HCA that were later found to be illegal — specifically, that Scott and other executives offered financial incentives to doctors in exchange for patient referrals, in violation of federal law, according to lawsuits the Justice Department filed against the company in 2001.”

As Rolling Stone’s report added, the Florida Republican even used to express a degree of contrition over the matter, telling voters in 2010, “I’ve made mistakes in my life. And mistakes were certainly made at Columbia/HCA.”

That was 14 years ago. Now, evidently, Scott has settled on an entirely new position: He was a victim of a secret Justice Department plot orchestrated by then-first lady Hillary Clinton.

Even by contemporary GOP standards, this is awfully weird, though the Republican incumbent is generally seen as likely to win re-election anyway.

The Hill’s nonpartisan ethics watchdog found probable cause to believe Rep. Troy Nehls used campaign funds for personal use, according to a new report released Friday.

"[T]here is probable cause to believe that Rep. Nehls may have converted campaign funds to personal use by expending funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes," wrote the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The investigation was disclosed in a report released Friday by the House Ethics Committee, which is evenly split between both parties.

The Texas Republican’s congressional campaign made periodic rent payments since the 2020 campaign cycle to a company, Liberty 1776 LLC, owned and operated by Nehls and headquartered at his home address, according to the report. The company's right to do business in Texas had been terminated by the state in 2022 for failing to pay taxes.

But his campaign listed a separate venue, “Freedom Hall,” as its headquarters. OCE wrote that it had been a bar or tavern later converted into an Islamic center and boarding school. No rent payments were directly recorded from the Nehls campaign to the venue or the entity that owned it.

The Hill’s nonpartisan ethics watchdog found probable cause to believe Rep. Troy Nehls used campaign funds for personal use, according to a new report released Friday.

"[T]here is probable cause to believe that Rep. Nehls may have converted campaign funds to personal use by expending funds that were not attributable to bona fide campaign or political purposes," wrote the board of the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The investigation was disclosed in a report released Friday by the House Ethics Committee, which is evenly split between both parties.

The Texas Republican’s congressional campaign made periodic rent payments since the 2020 campaign cycle to a company, Liberty 1776 LLC, owned and operated by Nehls and headquartered at his home address, according to the report. The company's right to do business in Texas had been terminated by the state in 2022 for failing to pay taxes.

But his campaign listed a separate venue, “Freedom Hall,” as its headquarters. OCE wrote that it had been a bar or tavern later converted into an Islamic center and boarding school. No rent payments were directly recorded from the Nehls campaign to the venue or the entity that owned it.

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the criminal conviction of Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to Donald Trump, for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 House select committee, a ruling that could send the populist conservative strategist to prison.

Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022, but the judge overseeing his case agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.

But a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the committee.