“Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners raised an additional $1.5 billion from the Qatar Investment Authority and Abu Dhabi-based asset manager Lunate, and extended the investment period of its debut fund to 2029,” Bloomberg reports.

“The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office should be removed from the 2020 election interference case, a bombshell decision that will upend the last remaining criminal case against incoming President Donald Trump,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

“A panel of three judges, all GOP appointees, concluded that Willis’ onetime romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade constituted a conflict of interest that merited her dismissal from the case.”

“A judge on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s argument that a recent Supreme Court ruling had nullified his criminal case in New York, upholding the former and future president’s felony conviction for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal,” the New York Times reports.

“The judge’s ruling preserves, at least for now, the stain of Mr. Trump’s criminal conviction. And if it withstands Mr. Trump’s appeal, it will make him the first felon to serve as president.”

“The ruling, which addressed the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents broad immunity for their official actions, thwarted only the first of several legal maneuvers Mr. Trump has concocted to clear his record of 34 felonies before returning to the White House.”

Wall Street Journal: “The judge left for another day the question of whether Trump should ever be sentenced for 34 low-level felony counts of falsifying business records.”

“Elon Musk’s net worth has climbed by more than $200 billion in 2024, a massive increase in the same year that the world’s richest person spent at least $277 million backing Donald Trump and other Republican candidates,” the Washington Post reports.

“The bulk of the increase, more than $170 billion, has come since Election Day.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham told NBC News “no” he does not agree with President-elect Donald Trump that members of the Jan. 6 committee should go to jail.

Joshua Green: “As Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with loyalists, he appears to be angling to put another devoted ally on Capitol Hill: His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.”

“With Marco Rubio poised to relinquish his US Senate seat to become secretary of state, jockeying is underway in Florida to replace him. The president-elect hasn’t publicly endorsed a candidate for the role, but he previously paved the way for her to co-chair the Republican National Committee and has praised her as ‘dedicated to all that MAGA stands for.’”

“Eric Trump has big plans for his family’s real estate firm as his father prepares to enter the White House for a second term: New projects in Europe, Vietnam and India; perhaps a Trump-branded golf course in Saudi Arabia; ‘certainly’ buildings in Israel at some point down the line,” Bloomberg reports.

“Still, he wants to make one thing clear: Anyone doing business with the Trump Organization to curry favor with the incoming president will be ‘coming to the wrong guy.’”

President-elect Donald Trump pointed to his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a relative who could carry on the Trump political dynasty, Axios reports.

Said Trump: “Look, she was the head of the Republican Party. She’s a young, a young woman, and she was the head of the Republican Party.”

He also noted his daughter, Ivanka Trump, “would be a superstar in politics.” But he noted she’s “so family-oriented,” which would make a political career “definitely more difficult.”

And he said both Don Jr. and Eric are “very capable.”

“Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle have broken up,” sources tell Page Six.

“Insiders add that Trump Jr. has moved on with Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson.”

Daily Mail: Donald Trump Jr. is seen flaunting his romance with socialite Bettina Anderson in Palm Beach…with no sign of fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle.

“The Justice Department secretly obtained phone records from two members of Congress and 43 staffers – including Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI – during sweeping leak investigations during Trump’s first term, according to a watchdog report released Tuesday,” CNN reports.

“The new report from the Justice Department’s inspector general raises concerns about how the department tried to root out reporters’ sources from a sprawling and bipartisan list of federal employees who had access to classified information because of their job.”

ProPublica: “There have been internal concerns that Trump Media could be misleading investors… But with its largest shareholder about to be president, experts doubt the SEC is up to the job of investigating Truth Social’s parent company.”

“Donald Trump derailed his 2020 election subversion indictments by winning back the White House, but dozens of his allies still face state criminal prosecutions that he, even as president, can’t shut down through his Justice Department or short-circuit with pardons,” CNN reports.

“Since the election, Democratic prosecutors in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin have pledged to move ahead with cases against Trump allies who were involved with the ‘fake electors’ plot, which tried to overturn his 2020 defeat in those states.”

Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) called President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to imprison her and other members of a congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic,” the New York Times reports.

She continued: “This was the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history. Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

“Weeks after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the presidential race in August and endorsed Donald Trump, the Trump campaign paid a California law firm that lists Kennedy among its lawyers,” NBC News reports.

“The Trump campaign — now known as Never Surrender Inc. — disbursed $100,000 to ‘JW Howard Attorneys’ on Sept. 13, just three weeks after Kennedy bowed out of the race and backed Trump, FEC records show. Financial data for Trump’s campaign, which was converted to a leadership PAC, appears in FEC filings under the new Never Surrender name.”

Politico: “Though the criminal cases against him are all but dead, Trump is likely to be fighting eight civil lawsuits — from members of Congress and injured police officers — deep into his second term. They may be the last form of legal redress Trump faces for his role in spurring the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 … a last stand of sorts for those seeking to hold Trump accountable for the chaos his supporters wrought that day.”

New York Times: “The cases are not criminal, but if they end up at trial, they could result not only in financial damages imposed on Mr. Trump, but also in the public airing of evidence about Jan. 6 that has not taken place — and may never — in the context of his dismissed or delayed criminal trials.”

“Donald Trump is off on his first international trip as president-elect, ready to join world leaders and dignitaries in Paris for a Saturday celebration of the renovation of Notre Dame Cathedral after a devastating fire in 2019,” NPR reports.

CNN: Trump to return to world stage for Notre Dame Cathedral reopening in Paris.

Adam Serwer: “As Trump reshapes the nation in his image, some of his supporters seem inclined to turn cautionary tales on their head, empathizing with villains or antiheroes to such a degree that they miss the point of these stories entirely, even when the writers make the message as clear as possible. We might call this problem Tony Soprano Syndrome, after the patron saint of flawed antihero protagonists…”

“Almost every single thing here is wrong, but it’s wrong in a way that illustrates the illiteracy that I am talking about. The Sopranos is by any measure one of the greatest television series of all time, focusing on the daily travails of a mob boss who tries to balance his mental health with keeping his marriage together and raising his children. But Tony is a murderer whose greed and ambition harm the people he claims to love. He is not a moral exemplar, nor is he intended to be; his selfishness helps no one else and is destructive to all around him. The same is true of Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, who at one point in the show literally looks at the camera and says of his crimes, ‘I did it for me.'”

“Again, the creators could not be more clear that these characters are horrible people whom others should not seek to emulate.”