Donald Trump wants to crush The Swamp. The leaks, the sneaks, and the secrets are all there. Our writers, David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice, are sifting through the ooze so you don’t have to. Don’t miss out.
Donald Trump’s new favorite Mean Girl, one-time beauty contestant Lindsey Halligan, shares more than just a friendship with Karoline Leavitt. At 36, the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia was remarkably unqualified for the job heading up the “Rocket Docket”, the fastest federal trials court in the country. Age certainly hasn’t hindered Leavitt, 28, whose “machine gun lips” have made her invaluable as the president’s attack dog press secretary.
But while Leavitt has been sure-footed in her role in the administration’s first nine months, Halligan has been busy shooting herself in the foot.
The latest misstep is a threat to launch a leak investigation into her own prosecutors. According to MSNBC, Halligan has nagged her “rattled” leadership team to bring a quick prosecution against a Democratic state lawmaker after indicting two of Trump’s top targets—New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. When asked by MSNBC for her comments, Halligan responded in a way that is hardly going to endear her to worried departmental attorneys by threatening her own staff. “EDVA enforces a strict zero-tolerance policy on the unauthorized disclosure of information concerning ongoing investigations or cases,” she said. “Such leaks will be investigated to the maximum extent permitted by law.”
On Tuesday, Halligan’s rookie dealings with journalists were revealed after she tried to claim a series of text messages she shared with Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower were “off the record” after the fact. The embarrassing debacle only fueled speculation in her office that Halligan is out of her depth. Until she was appointed last month, Halligan had never prosecuted a case, and her first job was as an insurance lawyer before she was plucked from obscurity to become one of Trump’s personal attorneys. She was raised in Broomfield, Colorado, and went to the Jesuit Regis University in Denver and the University of Miami, but a clue to her relatively fast rise through the legal ranks may lie in her attempts to win the Miss Colorado USA pageant, reaching the semi-final in 2009 and third-place the following year.
The Swamp is told that Halligan became friends at Regis University with Erika Frantzve, who went on to become Miss Arizona and then Mrs. Charlie Kirk. Erika now runs Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization. Frantzve came fourth to Halligan’s third in the Miss Colorado pageant in 2010.
“Sports and pageants taught me confidence, discipline, and how to handle pressure—on the court, on the field, on the stage, in the courtroom, and now in the White House,” Halligan told the Washington Post. The Miss Colorado pageant was a feeder for Trump’s Miss Universe, and Halligan, then a lawyer, met him at Mar-a-Lago in 2021, the Post reported. The president has made no secret of his penchant for beauty queens. Still, Halligan’s not winning any Miss Congeniality contests. But maybe the president can seek her views on world peace.
The Human Autopens Behind Trump’s Truths
The Swamp can reveal the answer to a running White House mystery: who has access to Donald Trump’s social media accounts? While the former president is said to spend hours scrolling his own Truth Social platform, not every post that bears his name necessarily comes straight from his raging thumbs.
Only two other trusted aides have the dubious honor of helping the president craft his “Truths.” The Human Autopens.
The first is Dan Scavino, the longtime MAGA acolyte who has worked for Trump ever since he was hired in 2004 as an assistant manager of Trump’s National Golf Club in Westchester. Known as the digital whisperer, Scavino is the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of the Presidential Personnel Office, which is tasked with vetting new appointees. “How many times, if you had to guess, have you typed out ‘Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter’?” presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump asked Scavino last week in a not-so-probing interview for her Fox News Channel program My View. Scavino noted: “Wow! Uh well that started a few months ago, um, I would say I have probably—I mean, he does some on his own, too—um, I would say I have probably anywhere in the range of between 100 and 110 times maybe…so thank you for your attention to this matter.”
The president’s other social media spinner is the lesser known Natalie Harp, a former One America News personality who travels with Trump almost everywhere. Harp, 34, is so devoted to the president she once wrote him a series of doting letters, including one that said: “You are all that matters to me.” She’s also been known to follow him around with a portable printer and a battery pack to charge it, so she could hand him information in hard copy paper, which he prefers (the president’s habits are often stuck in the 1980s, after all). Thus one of the Human Autopens already had a nickname—“The Human Printer.” But while Trump reportedly views Harp like a daughter, her devotion has nonetheless raised a few eyebrows from Washington to West Palm Beach. Together, Scavino and Harp appear to act like Trump’s autopens. But they are doing much more than just signing his signature.
The Vice President Does a Nice Thing
The Swamp can be snarky at times, we admit. But we are absolutely not going to be cynical about JD Vance ambushing a bride and groom on the street outside St Mary’s in Kentucky and having his picture taken with the bridal party. They all look just so goshdarned excited about it. Vance even sent a note and a bottle of Blanton’s bourbon to Mr and Mrs William Joshua Head at their reception that evening. The vice president did a nice thing. Sure, it’s a white, heterosexual couple, but we would like to hope that had nothing to do with it. Here’s hoping for more stories like this.
Kevin Rudd’s Pride Party Blues.
Poor Kevin Rudd just can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to Donald Trump. On Monday, the Australian Ambassador to the U.S. was faced with the awkward reality of being admonished by the president in real time, after Trump discovered Rudd had once said some rather nasty things about him (namely that he was a “traitor to the West”; the “most destructive president in history”; and just plain “nuts”). But two days before their high-stakes meeting alongside Australian PM Anthony Albanese, the shadow of Trump also loomed large at the ambassador’s private DC residence, where hundreds of people had gathered for his annual LGBTQ Pride party. Since Rudd and his wife Thérèse Rein moved into the “White Oaks” residence two years ago, their Pride parties have been the envy of the diplomatic community: raucous shindigs filled with home grown Aussie DJs, Washington’s most flamboyant drag queens, generous spreads of Australian food and wine, and even the occasional Eurovision performance (last year featured Electric Fields, fresh from their debut at the global song contest). This year’s party, however, was the first since Trump returned to power and enacted his War on Woke in Washington—and it’s fair to say it was a much less festive affair. There were no drag queens or DJs, no DEI-laced speeches from the ambassador, and no giant rainbow colored balloons or swanky Pride merch. Indeed, much to the chagrin of guests, the Tasmanian cuvee even ran out more than an hour before the end of the party. Maybe Rudd had to tighten the purse strings after racking up a taxpayer funded party bill of $103,000 over the past two years. But insiders say the move was also about balancing diplomacy in the era of Trump: where the messaging for such events must be more “community engagement” and less “drag queen nightclub.” Whether Rudd will be around to host another party next year is an open question, given Trump is now aware of the nasty things he once said. “I don’t like you either,” the president told him on Monday, “and I probably never will.”
Tenor Hits a High Note for Trump
Andrea Bocelli paid a discreet visit to the White House this week and as Trump was playing one of his classics over the Sonos system (or hifi!), the Italian tenor joined in to give the president a private concert in the Oval Office. Trump’s special assistant Margo Martin posted a clip online. The song was Con te partirò or Time to Say Goodbye. Too hopeful perhaps?
Bibi Bro Bails Out the Trump Whisperer
The American most responsible for the Middle East peace deal between Israel and Hamas has not been mentioned by Donald Trump and scarcely features in any reports about the U.S. president’s breakthrough to negotiate the return of the October 7 hostages.
Ron Dermer, the football-playing son of a Miami Beach Mayor, was educated at Wharton and Oxford, and has been described as a cross between George Stephanopoulos and Karl Rove.
While Donald Trump’s golfing buddy Steve Witkoff has taken much of the credit for the uneasy peace in Gaza, it is Dermer’s partnership with Jared Kushner—a relationship forged creating the one enduring legacy of Trump’s first term, the Abraham Accords—that really cemented the peace plan, sources told The Swamp.
Fiercely competitive, Israel’s “Strategic Affairs Minister” is the prime minister’s closest confidante. “Bibi scarcely blinks without checking in with Ron first,” said an insider. The American-born fixer was Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021, taking in all of Trump’s first Oval Office go around. Dermer was especially driven to produce results as he had led Israel’s negotiating team for the return of the October 7 hostages since February, and his lack of results was beginning to raise questions. Dermer’s first job out of college was for flip-flopping pollster Frank Luntz, who once rented a room to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Dermer also was quarterback in three World Cups for Israel’s flag-football team. Rising swiftly through the power ranks in Tel Aviv, he became close to Benjamin Netanyahu, who also lived in the States as a boy—in New York and Pennsylvania—and graduated from MIT. With the peace deal looking fragile this week, there’s no doubt who will be more important in holding it together between the Trump Whisperer and the Bibi Bro.
Alex Karp’s Oval-Office Cameo
It’s not unusual these days for random guests to pop into the Oval Office while the president takes questions from the White House pool. Last Wednesday, Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo caught the president’s eye as she stood quietly with the pool ahead of a scheduled one-on-one interview with Trump. So too did former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista, who was recently confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. But a blurry cameo by Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp was somewhat more mysterious, raising renewed questions about the growing influence of the controversial tech firm within the Trump White House. Karp was spotted by reporters quietly standing in the back of the Oval Office during a press conference with FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Palantir—which Karp co-founded in 2003 alongside JD Vance’s mega-donor Peter Thiel—is deeply embedded in the government’s data-sharing architecture, working, for example, with the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration on major data-fusion initiatives. Palantir also recently scored a $10 billion, 10-year enterprise agreement with the US Army to streamline data and software needs and a $30 million contract to help ICE use AI and data mining to deport illegal immigrants. The company often claims it’s simply a data integration and analysis platform. But its closeness to power, breadth of access, and the lack of transparency begs the question: are we watching a tech firm not just service the government, but also shape it?
Trump Starts His 2026 Campaign … With Golf
Perhaps no one has tied themselves up in more knots to get behind Donald Trump than Sen. Lindsey Graham. And is it any wonder? The South Carolina Republican got booed in his own home state at Trump’s primary victory party last year. But Trump is repaying a favor to those most loyal to him. The president will help fundraise for Graham at the third annual “Trump Graham Classic” golf tournament next month as the lawmaker faces a primary challenge from the right. Graham is still sweating 2020 where Democrats raised millions to challenge him and left him begging for cash. While the concern was unnecessary with him soundly winning his reelection, Graham said he needs to keep his guard up. The senator has a massive $14.5 million war chest ready despite being in a ruby red state. Still, money could run out fast if things get ugly during the primary. Earlier this year, Graham chirped about his big win at the Trump International Spring Member-Guest Tournament in March. Other winners that day included golfer Gary Player, former Congressman Trey Gowdy, and–no surprise here–Trump.
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