Ben Clerkin

“I suspect that the FBI is going to find things missing.” As a member of the Georgia State Election Board, Salleigh Grubbs is an authority on the alleged 2020 election fraud that led to an FBI raid on an election center in Fulton County. “It could be ballots, it could be reconciliations, it could be poll tapes, it could be any number of things,” she told The Spectator. “They have been fighting to prevent anyone looking at this evidence and preventing investigations. If you don't have anything to hide, why do you care?” Fulton officials finally admitted in December – after being subpoenaed by the State Election Board – they had broken state regulations by failing to sign 2020 election tabulator tapes and that they had misplaced other tabulator tapes.

The collective memory of Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen has, for most Americans, been buried if not entirely forgotten.  Donald Trump, however, is not the sort of man who moves on from such matters. In his mind, Crooked Joe Biden stole the election from him through widespread voter fraud, at the heart of which was Fulton County, Georgia. And now a succession of court battles that started with him in the dock is ending with Team Trump doing the prosecuting.  The FBI and his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, have raided a warehouse in Fulton stuffed with 2020 votes and taken them away in trucks. Will they find voter irregularity? Perhaps. Recent admissions by Fulton officials have cast doubt on the processing of 335,000 votes.

Lost in the hysterical media bleating about a new criminal investigation into Jerome Powell is any attempt to report fairly on his alleged transgressions. The singular lens through which the investigation is being reported in many openly and not-so-openly left leaning outlets is that it is Donald Trump's revenge after Powell refused to do as instructed and lower interest rates But the aperture needs to be widened to see the full picture: the case is about more than the Chair of the Federal Reserve not bending the knee. It is about Powell's competency as the nation’s chief money man after presiding over the central bank’s vast and scandalous renovation project – that started at $1.9 billion, now stands at $2.

It was a performance worthy of an Oscar or maybe a Tony. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s address at his swearing in ceremony on New Year’s Day electrified the freezing crowd every bit as much as it shocked the Democratic establishment, and perhaps even the 50 percent of New Yorkers who didn’t vote for him. The newly-minted Mayor had the stage, but graciously acknowledged that the real star was socialism. “I was elected as a Democratic Socialist and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist.” He hailed an “era of big government,” vowed to govern “expansively and audaciously” and said he would “set an example for the world.

Gary J. Walters knows where a lot of the bodies are buried in the White House. He was chief usher for 21 years, worked there for 16 years before that, and has served and come to know intimately seven presidents and their families. Now he has written a book about his extraordinary career, White House Memories 1970-2007: Recollections of the Longest-Serving Chief Usher. Think what he must know of the skulduggery (Nixon), the marital strife (the Clintons), the chastising of children (the alcohol-inclined Bush daughters) and the shouting matches (doubtless all of them). As I gently prod Gary for gossip, he smiles mischievously – at 79, he still looks smart and spry enough to be running the White House machine.

Kyiv The urge to run from danger is only human. It was palpable when air raid sirens sounded as I left the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, which is close to the front line and under relentless attack nightly from Russian drones. Five MiG-31 aircraft were in the air, Telegram channels with access to reliable intelligence reported. The warplanes can be armed with either the Iskander ballistic missile – which travels at up to 5,400mph – or the Kinzhal hypersonic missile, top speed 7,700mph. So fast there wasn’t enough time to find a shelter. We sat in traffic with bated breath, waiting. A deep boom resonated through the mini-bus and two colleagues of mine began praying. Was it an intercept or an impact – or a Patriot defense battery firing? We still don’t know.

Is Maud Maron crazy? Bill Ackman certainly thought the Republican candidate for Manhattan DA was, she tells me, when she asked him for $2 million. While the billionaire hedge fund CEO said he could easily raise the money she needed to fund her campaign in a single night, ultimately he chose not to – and instead focused on backing Andrew Cuomo for mayor.Ackman thought “oh, she's a nice lady, but she's crazy,” Maron recalls. “She's running as a Republican in a Democratic city.”Fast forward six months and Cuomo is on the brink of losing to Zohran Mamdani – and Ackman has cast a vote for Maron, who he now calls “great.

As a Navy SEAL for 20 years, who reached the rank of Lieutenant Commander and served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jack Carr knows about warfare on an expert and visceral level. And as the New York Times bestselling author of The Terminal List series and writer of the Amazon hit show based on the books, starring Chris Pratt, he knows the power of words. He also has a tendency to succeed at whatever he turns his mind to (see the above). But, still, when he decided the Department of Defense should be renamed the Department of War, it seemed like a very tall order and he was a lone voice. Undeterred, he wrote in op-eds about how the department had lost its way and needed to refocus on warfighting by changing its name back to that it was given in 1789.

“I get death threats every day,” Laura Loomer says matter-of-factly, as if discussing her junk mail. “I get death threats from Muslims, radical leftists, trannies, you name it.” ‘After what happened to Charlie Kirk, you have to wonder if people are hiding on a roof planning to kill you’ An alligator skull, a bullhorn, a red MAGA hat and a grinning pumpkin sit on a shelf behind Loomer in her pink-lit Florida studio – otherwise known as the spare bedroom of her Gulf Coast rental. This is the headquarters of Loomer Unleashed, the notorious podcast from which she has single-handedly ended the careers of dozens of members of the Trump administration by revealing their alleged treachery. Yet it is very much her future under discussion right now.

Elon Musk stood silently in the Oval Office, eyeballing the South African President while Donald Trump tore into the ANC leader for permitting “white genocide.” The exiting Department for Government Efficiency (DoGE) chief said nothing as the President dimmed the lights and required an unsuspecting Cyril Ramaphosa to watch a short film about white farmers being targeted and South African politicians chanting “kill the farmer.”As Donald Trump berated Ramaphosa, Trump didn’t call on Musk, standing just a few feet away. He didn’t need to intervene: according to Elon’s father, Errol Musk, his son – an outspoken critic of Ramaphosa's government – had already briefed the President about what he agrees is “white genocide”.