Lindsay Clancy’s Lawyer Asks Trump to ‘Consider’ Pardon After Mistrial

Kevin Reddington also spoke about the possibility of reaching a plea deal with prosecutors that’s “acceptable to both sides”

Lindsay Clancy and her defense attorney, Kevin Reddington.

Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer asked President Donald Trump to consider pardoning the Massachusetts mother whose murder trial for the deaths of her three children recently ended in a mistrial.

Kevin Reddington, Clancy’s defense attorney, addressed Trump at the end of an interview on Good Morning America Tuesday, Sept. 8. Asked what was next for Clancy, Reddington mentioned Trump and the comments he made about the case last week after the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict and the mistrial was declared.

“I’d like to say that, perhaps, Donald Trump, who felt compelled to speak out about this case, may very well,” Reddington began, before stopping himself and stating plainly: “Mr. President, I hope that you would consider this young lady, the type of person she is, what she’s been through, and consider a pardon.”

When Trump was asked about the trial last week, he admitted to following the case because “it’s on television so much.” He went on to say Clancy “did a horrible, horrible thing,” and, “There’ll be a price. It’s going to be mental institution or jail or something, but I guess they’re going to go through another trial. It’s too bad.” (When reached for comment, the White House referred back to Trump’s previous statement.)

During the highly watched trial, prosecutors accused Clancy of “meticulously” planning the murders of her three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and Callan, eight months, after growing unhappy with her life. Her defense, however, argued that Clancy killed her children after suffering a postpartum psychotic break. They claimed Clancy heard a commanding male voice in her head when she strangled her children with exercise bands, then tried slashing her own throat and wrists before jumping out a second-story window of her home. (The fall left Clancy paralyzed from the waist down.)

The jury spent a week deliberating the case but ultimately told the judge they could not reach a unanimous verdict, with one holdout. On GMA, Redding said he believed that 11 jurors were in favor of delivering a verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity,” and he reiterated his frustration with the lone holdout juror for not applying “the law of reasonable doubt as presented by the judge.”

While Reddington made his pardon appeal to Trump, he also spoke about the possibility of striking a plea deal with prosecutor Timothy Cruz. “I’m willing to listen to Tim,” Reddington said, adding: “I hope, however, that after seeing through this trial, and seeing the evidence that was presented from the government, as well as from the defense, that he would revisit that reissue and hopefully we’d be able to work something out that would be acceptable to both sides.”

Trump has escalated his conflict with one of the USA's staunchest allies.

Lake Ontario has a new name, at least in the eyes of the American President.

Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this afternoon directing the U.S. government to call the Great Lake “Lake America,” int he latest, bizarre chapter to the increasingly strange relationship between Canada and its southern neighbour.

The change applies to the U.S. federal government, meaning American maps, documents and geographic databases will be updated. It does not, however, give Trump the power to tell Canada what to call a lake that has been sitting between Ontario and New York for thousands of years. The name 'Ontario' comes from an Indigenous Iroquoian term for the lake, recorded by French explorers in the 1640s and later adapted into its present form. The name eventually gave its name to the province of Ontario, when it joined Confederation in 1867.

The (very petty) renaming comes in the middle of an escalating trade war between Ottawa and Washington, with Trump having repeatedly turned his attention toward Canada and its relationship with the United States. Earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced new retaliatory tariffs as Trump and Republicans continue to threaten Canadian businesses and the country’s sovereignty (though he stressed he ‘loves French-Canadians’). He also seems particularly mad at Ontario Prime Minister Doug Ford, who has repeatedly lashed out at Trump. Ford has already dismissed the idea of the renaming, while federal officials have made clear that Canada will continue using the name Lake Ontario.

The White House says the new name recognizes the lake’s importance to American history, commerce and national interests. The fact that the lake is shared with Canada appears to have been left out of the equation.

This isn’t the first time Trump has made geographic renaming part of his political tactics. Earlier this year, he ordered the U.S. government to use “Gulf of America” in place of the Gulf of Mexico. That decision similarly applied to U.S. federal usage, but has failed to persuade Mexico, or the rest of the world, to adopt it.

LOS ANGELES - 1978: Country singer Dolly Parton poses for a portrait session in 1978 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Harry Langdon/Getty Images)

Presidents across party lines celebrated Dolly Parton on Tuesday following her death, speaking to the country icon’s ability to transcend politics through her work that often spoke louder than words.

On Tuesday, former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Bush each paid tribute to Parton, while President Donald Trump ordered that flags be flown at half-staff for the next week to honor “one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER.”

In their statements, the former presidents praised both Parton’s music and philanthropic endeavors. In 2020, Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University, which helped fund coronavirus research and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. The legendary singer also famously founded the Imagination Library, established in honor of her father Robert Lee Parton Sr., which distributes books to children in multiple countries.

In a statement posted on social media, Obama highlighted Parton’s humble roots, colossal impact in music and Hollywood, and her philanthropic work. “It’s hard to imagine many people having a bigger impact than Dolly Parton. Born in a one-room cabin, she earned 11 Grammys and an Emmy, built a business empire, helped millions of kids learn to read, and — as if that wasn’t enough — helped accelerate the research that led to the Moderna COVID vaccine,” Obama wrote. “What a life. Michelle and I are thinking of Dolly’s family and her many, many fans.”

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“Dolly Parton was one of a kind—a great songwriter and performer who told the stories of everyday Americans with honesty, humility, and heart,” wrote Clinton in another tribute. “She rose high from her East Tennessee roots and never forgot where she came from. And she always believed in giving back, especially in her efforts to promote literacy. Hillary and I were big fans and first saw her in 1974, and will always be grateful for the music and the memories.”

Bush and former first lady Laura Bush also joined fans in mourning Parton’s death. “We loved her music and her style. She was a great entertainer and even greater person,” wrote the former president. “We respected her work to promote literacy, advance health, and strengthen communities. Dolly was a talented and hardworking American who will be missed.”

Rather than taking a hard line on politics, Parton chose to shine a light on her values through both her work and own endeavors. The icon, a beloved supporter of the LGBTQ community, wrote and sang the Oscar-nominated song “Travelin’ Thru” from Transamerica, a 2005 movie about a transgender woman and her son. In 2017, Parton collaborated with her goddaughter, Miley Cyrus, to record “Rainbowland,” a hopeful tribute imagining a world of complete inclusivity and equality.

When speaking to Rolling Stone about the track the year it released, Parton called the song “one of those things we felt like the world needed a little message right now.” She continued, “If we could just do a little better, try a little harder, try to get along a little better, we could live in Rainbowland. If nothing else, if we tried a little harder at least we’d be a little more colorful than it is right now, a little brighter, a little shinier out there.”

Trump has escalated his conflict with one of the country's staunchest allies.

In the absence of a coherent political strategy, threaten something ridiculous. Such has been the strategy of the Trump administration in virtually every major foreign policy and economic decision of his second term. As relations with Canada — our northern ally and major trade partner — collapse into a trade war spurred by the American president’s tariff threats, things have once again escalated into the absurd.

On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to goad Canada, writing that “the United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer.”

The threat mirrors Trump’s claims that he holds the authority to rename major global geographical features at will. Notably the president has attempted to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” It’s all a part of a larger imperialist impulse on Trump’s part. The president has floated invading and annexing Greenland, Venezuela, and Canada, claiming he will make each the “51st state.”

“Over the last 10 years, the United States lost, on average, 60 Billion Dollars a year with Canada. No more,” he added in a subsequent post — which misrepresented the annual import/export differential between Canada and the United States as a “loss” and not an exchange of goods.

Americans can count the death of North American free trade among the many casualties of the second Trump administration. Earlier this month, Trump threatened to level punishing, 50 percent tariffs on over $20 billion of Canadian imports. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has threatened dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs.

“In recent days, the United States proposed new terms that were uneconomic, unfair, and undermined the net benefits for Canada and called into question the reliability of any deal,” Carney said on Sunday. “In short, they asked too much and they offered too little. You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked.”

Canadian goods account for approximately 10-15 percent of all U.S. imports, and is the nation’s second biggest trade partner by volume after Mexico. With costs for everyday goods continuing to rise, and an affordability crisis threatening Republicans’ unified party hold on Congress after the midterms, a trade war with a historic ally comes off as wholly idiotic. Maine Senator Susan Colling, a Republican facing a tough reelection bid in a state that borders Canada, said in a recent interview that “imposing new tariffs on Canada is a mistake.”

In a post on social media, she warned that continuing down this path “will increase costs for Maine families, as most businesses will have no choice but to pass on the tariffs to their customers through higher prices.”

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has threatened to cut off energy exports to the United States from Ontario, telling reporters on Monday that “everything is on the table,” and that Americans “won’t get a grain of sand” out of the province that powers millions of homes in the United States if things continue to spiral.

As for the American president, he had some choice words.

Trump can “”kiss my ass.”

Donald Trump in the Oval Office in August 2026.

President Donald Trump told the Department of Justice to settle its antitrust suit with Live Nation after meeting with CEO Michael Rapino in the Oval Office in late February, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The new story digs into the lobbying efforts and behind-the-scenes maneuvering that preceded Live Nation’s surprise settlement with the DOJ in early March, just one week into the company’s federal antitrust trial. While some co-plaintiff states signed onto that deal, many continued with the case, and a jury ultimately found Live Nation liable for operating as a monopoly in April.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the settlement was reached after a meeting at the White House on March 5 attended by Rapino, the company’s lawyers, and DOJ officials (including former Attorney General Pam Bondi). But Rapino had also met with Trump a few weeks earlier.

According to the report, Rapino’s Feb. 27 meeting at the Oval Office primarily centered around Trump’s efforts to overhaul the Kennedy Center, and the president’s desire to enlist Live Nation to handle the venue’s operations. But during the meeting, the president also asked Rapino why the company hadn’t settled its antitrust case with the DOJ yet. After, Trump reportedly directed the DOJ to strike a deal.

Reps for Live Nation did not immediately return requests for comment. Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said, “Unlike Joe Biden, President Trump has not weaponized the Department of Justice against his political foes or used it to help his friends. The Department is focused on restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”

The DOJ’s settlement with Live Nation has drawn significant criticism, both for how the deal was reached, and the terms it contains. While it did force some concessions from Live Nation on key issues involving its amphitheater business and Ticketmaster’s exclusivity contracts, many claimed it did not go far enough to address the company’s alleged monopoly over the live entertainment industry. For instance, the plaintiff states are currently seeking to force Live Nation to divest from Ticketmaster following their victory in court.

Dan Wall, Live Nation’s executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs, touted the terms of the deal in a new statement shared with the WSJ. “Our critics are comparing this settlement to the irrational hope of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster,” Wall said. “For the actual claims in this case, the DOJ and settling states got as much or more as they could have expected to win in court.”

He also defended Live Nation’s actions as it worked to reach a settlement with the DOJ: “The only reason we went above the Antitrust Division to senior DOJ leadership is because no one there would speak to us. When you’ve been unable to get a meeting for six months, you have every right to try something else.”

Live Nation made significant efforts to lobby the DOJ and Trump administration into dropping, or settling, the antitrust. The company worked closely with many people close to the president, including Kellyanne Conway and MAGA influencer-lawyer Mike Davis (who previously helped lobby the DOJ to drop its challenge to a $14 billion merger between Hewlett Packard and Juniper Networks). And Trump involved himself reportedly after hearing about the case from prominent people.

According to the WSJ, Live Nation’s efforts also included hiring top law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to lead its settlement talks. The Sullivan & Cromwell team reportedly included two antitrust experts, but also a lawyer named James McDonald, who had little antitrust experience, but was representing Trump in his criminal cases in New York. (In July, Trump appointed McDonald to lead the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.)

Additionally, two top political appointees at DOJ reportedly had an influence over an early set of proposed settlements. One pushed the lawyers at the antitrust division to remove language forcing Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster from a draft response; he and the other appointee also reportedly echoed talking points Live Nation had unsuccessfully tried in court.

As for the case itself, it’s now in the remedies phase, during which Judge Arun Subramanian will decide what kind of punishment Live Nation will receive. Subramanian also has to review and approve the DOJ’s settlement with Live Nation, and decide whether it was reached in the public interest. In a July letter to the judge, the plaintiff states said said they had “significant concerns” that it was not in the public interest, and asked the DOJ to share new details about how the settlement was reached.

Natalie Harp with Donald Trump on July 22, 2026.

In early 2024, while reporting a story on New York’s boisterous, controversial Young Republican Club, one of my sources told me they had a pretty direct line to Donald Trump himself.

At the time, Trump wasn’t president again — yet. But he was campaigning, and in order to get something in front of his eyes you had to first get the attention of someone else: his assistant and right-hand woman, Natalie Harp.

Harp, 35, is now at the center of a major media frenzy, as Democrats like Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff have seized upon her unusual relationship with her boss: part assistant, part hype-man, part gatekeeper. On Sunday night, Ossoff made a comment that many interpreted as an insinuation that Harp had a more personal relationship to the president.

“The president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks,” Ossoff said at a campaign event in Georgia. “See he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Ossoff’s comments set off a firestorm both in Democratic circles and the GOP’s reactionary messaging apparatus.

“Jon Jackoff has to be the biggest cuck loser in politics,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted on Monday morning. By Tuesday, the entire media ecosystem had weighed in — with some coming right out and saying what they thought Ossoff was implying in his joke, and detailing why it was out of bounds.

“Ossoff was clearly implying that Trump was having an affair with his staffer,” Megyn Kelly wrote on X. Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna called him a “sexist arrogant jerk.” Pundit Robby Starbuck wrote that “Ossoff is a vile coward for insinuating they’re having an affair.” The flood of backlash poured out of just about every conservative commentator you could think of.

The White House joined the fray after CNN posed a question about Harp to Trump, asking him to respond to Ossoff’s comments directly. “You mean Pee-Wee Herman?” Trump quipped in the moment, referring to Ossoff. His comms team went for a full broadside later online. “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” Trump’s rapid response account posted at CNN reporter Kristen Holmes. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”

Ossoff, meanwhile, tried to soften the blow of his joke, redirecting it — sort of — away from Harp herself to make it more of a comment on the president’s relationship to his staff in general. “I’ve heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket,” he told Jen Psaki on MS NOW. “And I think we could say that about any number of the senior aides in the White House.”

But the damage was done, and it’s hard to believe Ossoff didn’t know exactly what he was doing. In recent years, some Democrats have occasionally flirted with the type of mud-slinging that Trump and his imitators became known for, but they’ve rarely landed a hit that provoked this much of a reaction.

“What a coward. Own your sexist joke, bro,” right-wing commentator Scott Jennings posted.

Harp’s history — and her relationship to the president — give some clues as to why the Republican beehive is so agitated.

Harp began her career in the public eye as an anchor for One America News, a right-wing propaganda outlet that was founded in 2013 and became something of a mouthpiece for the Trump administration and then the MAGA movement during the Biden administration. Democrats and liberal commentators have pointed out that Harp was often fawning over Trump during her segments.

While these clips have been used as more evidence that Trump and Harp have a strange dynamic, it’s hard to say that this kind of content is outside of the norm for OAN’s programming at the time. But that doesn’t mean Harp’s history with Trump isn’t strange — even by MAGA supplicant standards.

At the 2020 Republican National Convention, she said she was a bone cancer survivor and credited her survival to a “Right to Try” policy pushed by Trump in 2018 that allowed patients to use experimental drugs.

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” Harp said at the RNC. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

The Washington Post, however, notes that the drug Harp used was already approved by the FDA — which would have meant that the “Right to Try” law wouldn’t have applied.

Still, it’s clear that Harp feels a close personal connection to Trump. After her short stint at OAN, the Post cited her as a Trump employee as early as 2022. In 2024, The New York Times reported that Harp’s primary role on Trump’s staff was what other aides called “the human printer” — following Trump around with a battery powered printer so she could give him physical copies of social media posts, missives, text messages, and positive, often conspiratorial news stories. The Post story in 2022 also detailed her in this role, noting that other aides were “particularly distressed” by her access to and influence with the president.

“She is indicative of the people around him who just love him,” one anonymous adviser told the Post in 2022. “Love him too much.”

The Times’ reporting also noted that Harp’s esteem for Trump was particularly fervent, describing how she wrote him a series of what the newspaper called “devotional letters,” one of which said: “You are all that matters to me.” The Times described her running behind Trump’s golf cart, reading him social media posts and news articles. Following one of those instances, the Times reports that she wrote him another letter, apologizing for being “an embarrassment” while on the golf course in Scotland. “I want things to always be right between us,” she wrote. “I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).” Harp signed the letter, “With all my heart, Natalie.”

Harp’s family have acknowledged that her relationship to Trump is not that of a traditional staffer. In an interview with CNN on Tuesday night, Harp’s estranged brother Preston Harp said that “Since she was 16 she’s had an obsession with – she’s written letters to other presidents, let me put it that way,” Preston Harp said, mentioning “George Bush during the Iraq War” and that “her dream came true finally.”

These details are certainly odd, but so is basically everything about the particularities of Trump’s inner circle. Ossoff’s comment, however, likely came at least partially in response to another outlandish story that broke earlier this month.

On August 10, the Post reported that Trump had covertly switched planes during a trip to Turkey, hiding in an airline catering truck with a tiny group of aides in order to dodge a potential attack on Air Force One by Iranian proxies. The White House press corps and several key government figures — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio — stayed on board the “decoy plane.” Harp did not. She was reportedly in the food truck with Trump.

It’s impossible to know the exact nature of Harp’s relationship with Trump. Ossoff did not specifically mention an affair, though it’s hard to interpret his familiar comment as anything else — and the right-wing media is reacting to it as such, trying to take a moral high ground on behalf of a president who has, at least in civil court, been found liable for sexual abuse on at least one count, and routinely makes sexist comments toward female reporters and others.

Jesse Watters of Fox News was one of the only right-wing commentators to recognize the hypocrisy of bashing Ossoff’s comment while supporting Trump: “Am I fazed by this comment? No. Has Trump said so much worse, so much more sleazy things against other people? Yes. Have I defended those things? Absolutely. So, I’m not going to pretend to be all hot and bothered by it.”

Watters is an outlier, though. No matter what the charges, Trump will always have his protectors in the GOP, some more loyal than others. In recent years, Natalie Harp has been more loyal than anyone else.