Iran Dumps Cold Water on Trump’s Claims of Peace Talks

Negotiations to end the Iran war do not seem to be going well.The White House and Tehran are apparently not even on the same page when it comes to resolving the nearly six-month conflict. Iranian officials directly contradicted Donald Trump Monday by telling Reuters that talks were not currently underway and that there were no plans to resume them.Trump called off another slate of attacks against Iran Sunday, backing down yet again from the threat of a major assault.Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One that day, Trump said that he had scrapped the “massive” attack after being lobbied by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.“We were all set to go, but when our allies ask to call it off, you sort of have to say, ‘Well, let’s see,’” Trump said.“And the reason they asked is they think there’s a deal. There’s a deal on Hormuz, and then there will be a deal on the nuclear—or you might call it the denuclearization of Iran. I call it the denuclearization of Iran,” Trump said. “So we’re holding it. We can do it anytime we want, but we were asked by the three primary groups, we were also asked by Iran very strongly actually. They said, ‘We’d like to make a deal.’”The president then predicted that Tehran would turn around and say, “We don’t know what he’s talking about” with regard to a potential peace deal.“Obviously they don’t want to be attacked,” Trump said.The negotiations were set to take place Monday afternoon, according to the president.Iran is currently in talks with Oman to establish a safe, temporary route for ships through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei. “To avoid any ambiguity, it should be clarified who the negotiations are with. We currently have no negotiations with the United States; the negotiations are with Oman,” Baghaei told CNN Monday, adding that the tentative arrangement would not automatically reopen the strait. “Whether this stage and this process can be connected to another process that leads to a reduction of tensions in the region, we must wait and see.”Baghaei also blamed U.S. officials for blowing up the memorandum of understanding in June, prolonging the unpopular and bloody hostilities.“It violated all of its commitments, reinstated the illegal maritime blockade, revoked the authorization for the sale of Iranian oil, and effectively declared almost all of the other commitments it had accepted under the memorandum null and void,” Baghaei said.The Department of Justice’s move to dismiss its criminal case against Olympian David Hearn exposed just how bad things have gotten inside the Trump administration. In a new episode of his Justice Matters podcast, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner argued that the DOJ’s motion to dismiss revealed just how shoddy its case was to begin with. Kirschner noted that Donald Trump’s DOJ blamed the Department of the Interior for initially claiming that the damage was “entirely caused by vandals” and admitted that the DOJ hadn’t fully investigated the matter. “Talk about finger-pointing,” Kirschner said. “Talk about the refusal to take responsibility for your botched indictment. That is ugly. That is unseemly. As a career federal prosecutor, including decades that I served in that very office, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, you don’t indict first and investigate later. Nor do you take the word of another agency of government.”In its filing Friday, the DOJ acknowledged that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was caused by flawed installation by the contractor—contrary to the narrative Trump has been pushing for weeks.In a statement Saturday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum scrambled to keep up the story. “The evidence is clear, vandals have repeatedly caused damage to the Reflecting Pool. Some of these acts were even caught on camera,” he wrote on X. Kirschner also slammed the U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for mounting prosecution before fully investigating her own case.“That is not the way prosecution works,” Kirschner said. “Not in the ‘Before Times,’ but in the legal upside-down [world] courtesy of Trump and Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, it is ready, fire, aim, and that is inexcusable. It’s horrific, and it is a gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion and power.”Trump criticized Pirro’s decision to drop the case. In a Truth Social post Saturday, Trump admitted there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the lining installation, but “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” he wrote.Read more about the case:Texas Senator John Cornyn just caved to Donald Trump’s demands.The outgoing Lone Star lawmaker faced a barrage of criticism Sunday after he decided that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s vague assurances against Trump’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund were good enough.Cornyn had previously tasked the Justice Department chief with formally ending the slush fund altogether, predicating his support for Blanche’s tentative promotion on it. But a tricky memo released by Blanche Sunday night seemed to have tripped up Cornyn’s office—and his offer.On its face, Blanche’s note appeared to terminate the fund, specifying that the order was “rescinded and shall have no force or effect.” However, journalists were quick to comment that the language employed in the rest of Blanche’s memo not only suggested that the honeypot fund would be preserved in some form but also failed to terminate Trump’s underlying IRS immunity arrangement.But vague gestures at accountability were apparently all Cornyn needed to get in line.“Senator Cornyn has reached an agreement with the Department of Justice, which will be issuing a formal order permanently terminating the anti-weaponization fund and making clear in a binding written document that the scope of the audit settlement is limited to only the plaintiffs, including the President, and the IRS,” said Cornyn spokesperson Natalie Yezbick in a statement.The fund was the result of an unprecedented deal that Trump made with himself after he dropped his faltering $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. The arrangement included a curious addendum from Blanche, immunizing Trump from further federal prosecution. The government of the United States, Blanche wrote, would be “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing “any and all claims” against Trump, his family, or his business. The fund itself would be used as reparations, paid for by U.S. taxpayers through the Department of Justice, to virtually any right-winger who felt impugned by the previous presidential administration.The idea of the fund fell apart following weeks of backlash, numerous lawsuits, and opposition from even Republican lawmakers, who felt the issue had gummed up party efforts to pass a reconciliation bill.But Trump has refused to let the topic go, repeatedly affirming his support for the supposedly defunct fund.“It is dead, but I wish it weren’t, to be honest with you,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Friday. “I think people were horribly treated, horribly abused.”Blanche’s efforts to salvage the fund should be viewed as yet more evidence that the fund is not as dead as officials have publicly claimed.“Let’s be clear: It’s more certain that Trump is still pursuing bounties for rioters today than when this started,” wrote legal journalist Adam Klasfeld on Monday. “Trump is openly stating that’s the goal, taking legal action to get there and refusing to do the one thing that would kill it.”Cornyn is in the twilight years of his last term in office, a decades-long career cut short by Trump’s decision to endorse another candidate in Texas’s GOP primary in May. The cut cord has granted Cornyn the breathing room to ignore larger party directives and push back harder against the Trump administration’s off-color orders, but apparently, Cornyn is only willing to take that so far.Read more about Blanche’s nomination:Elon Musk is going to throw some of his millions of dollars into the midterms and back Senator Susan Collins.The New York Times reports that Musk plans to spend $100 million to $120 million to help Collins, as well as other Republican candidates in close Senate races. Collins, who recently got a new Democratic challenger in former state Senator Troy Jackson, has an uphill battle to keep her seat in the blue state of Maine. In addition to Maine, Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, plans to spend money in Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Michigan, all states with Senate contests where Democrats are polling well. The super PAC is also considering investing in the Senate races in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, and is already backing House Republican candidates in California, Wisconsin, and Washington. America PAC is reportedly coordinating with major conservative organizations outside of the Republican Party, including the Sentinel Action Fund and the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity. Musk’s organization plans to utilize its funds to knock on voters’ doors before November. While Musk’s efforts successfully got President Trump elected in 2024, his political work since then has backfired. His money and public appearances in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election last year ended up costing conservatives the race, and possibly even broke the law. After initially swearing off politics, he’s now back with a vengeance to back his old friend Trump.But with more than a year of bad press from his Department of Government Efficiency’s decimation of the federal government, Musk’s name is mud with voters. Democrats will be only too happy to point out when he backs their opponents, and he’s going to have to resist his desire to make public appearances unless he wants a repeat of Wisconsin. Read The TNR Blue Book, our new newsletter on the Democratic Party:Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno isn’t willing to take a stand on the political future of the guy who allegedly held a gun to his daughter’s head.NOTUS asked Moreno Friday whether Republicans should move to replace Representative Max Miller on Ohio’s ballot, after gruesome allegations surfaced that he had physically abused his ex-wife, Emily Moreno.“I don’t know,” the senator told NOTUS. It’s not clear what about this situation has Moreno so mystified. Moreno’s own daughter accused Miller of throwing hot water on her body, holding a gun to her head, and breaking their two-year-old daughter’s collarbone. Earlier this week, Emily Moreno filed for a new restraining order against Miller, alleging that he’d physically grabbed one of her attorneys and used a profane slur. If that doesn’t elicit the strongest condemnation, what does the Ohio senator care about? Moreno’s not alone in his total apathy. Other Republicans—including the entire Ohio Republican delegation—have remained disturbingly silent on the allegations. Reagan McCarthy, a spokesperson for Moreno, hit back at questions about Moreno’s continued support for his former son-in-law. “While we won’t dignify this baseless attacks by Democrats and their media allies, Senator Moreno will not speak on active litigation involving his family,” McCarthy told NOTUS in a statement.Read The TNR Blue Book, our new newsletter on the Democratic Party: