Justus Knight – RR News Update! August 6th, 2026
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DESCRIPTION
Fauci phone. Iran deal. Michigan Senate.
President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth face explosive reports about American missile stockpiles as Iran claims negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz are advancing.
Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan primary victory has triggered a new battle over whether Democrats can reunite before November, while his political allies appear determined to make that job substantially harder.
Then we examine the FBI’s newly revealed “Oxferd Comma” investigation and the Senate’s acquisition of Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era phone.
Could evidence found on that device nullify Fauci’s presidential pardon? The actual legal answer is far more complicated—and potentially more dangerous—than the headline.
Chapter Markers
00:00 A Mock Eulogy for Shri Thanedar
02:00 Four Stories and One Ridiculous Sidenote
03:00 Trump and Hegseth’s Reported Iran Clash
05:00 Sponsor Break
07:45 Deal or No Deal in the Strait of Hormuz?
10:00 Abdul El-Sayed’s Michigan Upset
11:00 Are Michigan Democrats Jumping Ship?
12:15 Hasan Piker’s Unity Flamethrower
15:15 The Spanish Red Cross Sidenote
17:10 The FBI’s “Oxferd Comma” Operation
19:50 Fauci Faces a Contempt Vote
21:30 Congress Obtains Fauci’s COVID Phone
23:00 Can New Evidence Destroy His Pardon?
24:00 Five Things the Pardon Cannot Protect
26:40 The Fifth Amendment Battle
27:40 The Telephone That Could Change History
Pinned Comment
Will Fauci’s phone change anything with the investigation? YES OR NO?
HASHTAGS
#AnthonyFauci, #RandPaul, #Trump, #Iran, #PeteHegseth, #StraitOfHormuz, #Michigan, #FBI, #Congress, #RestrictedRepublic
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COMMUNITY POST
What is today’s biggest story?
📱 Fauci’s COVID-era phone
🚀 Trump–Hegseth munitions reports
🛢️ The possible Iran–Hormuz deal
🔥 El-Sayed’s Michigan fallout
REFERENCES:
Shri Thanedar
https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2026/08/05/shri-thanedar-loses-his-primary-n2205214
https://apnews.com/article/ccba6c95386dd32b498fb248dfebbcb4
Trump, Hegseth and Iran
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16032763/Trump-munitions-leakers-Iran.html
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/deal-reopen-hormuz-2026-08-05
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-war-us-trump-strait-of-hormuz-deal
Abdul El-Sayed and the Michigan Senate Race
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/08/michigan-voters-are-jumping-ship-democrat-voters-vow/
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2085096708204290525
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2085040285973656023
https://apnews.com/article/60c79349b60ffbf24a34d60b76e130ed
Spanish Red Cross Sidenote
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/why-earth-are-they-doing
FBI “Oxferd Comma” Documents
https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2026/08/05/oxferd-comma-document-release-n2205209
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/05/trump-russian-asset-comey-fbi-investigation
Fauci Contempt Proceedings
https://apnews.com/article/c068561f3d2adddd0a659e099c212c49
Fauci’s COVID-Era Phone
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16032393/anthony-fauci-covid-senate-panel-phone.html
https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2026/08/05/fauci-phone-n2205236
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/anthony-fauci-covid-phone-senate-96ebd8be
Fauci Pardon and Legal Analysis
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1385746/dl?inline=
https://www.justice.gov/file/494556/dl?inline=
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/445/115
🚨 WTH—THEY FOUND IT! Trump & Hegseth GO NUCLEAR as Washington’s Most DANGEROUS PHONE Is UNLOCKED!
There are ordinary news days.
Then there are days when the president reportedly erupts at his defense secretary over vanishing missile stockpiles, Iran claims peace is right around the corner, Michigan Democrats begin eating one another alive—and Congress gets possession of Anthony Fauci’s COVID-era phone.
But first, we must pause for a moment of profound national grief.
Representative Shri Thanedar has lost his Democratic primary to Michigan state Representative Donavan McKinney.
Yes, Thanedar will remain in Congress until his term ends. But the political clip factory is closing. No more endless impeachment demands. No more speeches that sound as though every syllable is fighting its way through a malfunctioning drive-through speaker.
What will content creators do without him?
The agony.
The suffering.
The sudden collapse of America’s strategic impeachment-video reserve.
Thanedar’s defeat is part of a broader anti-incumbent wave that has already removed several safe-seat House Democrats during the 2026 primary season.
Now that the memorial service has concluded, we can move to the slightly less emotional subject of possible war.
Trump and Hegseth Reportedly Collide
According to The Washington Post, President Donald Trump demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a Camp David meeting over severe shortages of critical American munitions. The reported confrontation centered on whether Trump had been fully informed about how rapidly the Iran war was consuming long-range precision weapons.
Trump has publicly rejected reports suggesting that America is dangerously depleted and has blamed leakers for spreading misleading information. But the underlying numbers are difficult to ignore.
Reuters reports that the Army has used “virtually all” of the ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles committed to the five-month Iran conflict, while the Navy has consumed nearly half of the global American Tomahawk inventory. Those weapons allow the United States to strike from a distance without immediately placing pilots and aircraft inside heavily defended airspace.
That means the dispute is bigger than whether Trump yelled at Hegseth.
The real issue is whether the administration entered an extended conflict without fully understanding the replacement time, production capacity and strategic consequences of firing some of America’s most valuable weapons at industrial speed.
Iran is watching.
China is watching.
Russia is watching.
They do not need the United States to run entirely out of missiles. They only need Washington to become increasingly reluctant to use the remaining ones.
The Iran Deal That Is Always Almost Finished
President Trump says negotiations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are progressing and that the waterway could reopen soon.
Iran also says progress is being made.
Naturally, neither side appears to agree on what “progress” means.
The proposal reportedly under discussion would give Iran authority over ships entering the Persian Gulf while Oman would help manage outbound traffic. Iran wants fees potentially equal to 5% to 7% of cargo value, Oman has reportedly suggested 3%, and Washington wants no fees at all.
That is not a minor accounting disagreement.
Allowing Tehran to control entry into the Gulf could hand Iran precisely what it has sought throughout the conflict: recognized leverage over one of the most important energy corridors on Earth.
Trump has repeatedly announced or predicted reopenings, only to see fighting, inspections or restrictions return. The last arrangement collapsed within weeks after shipping guarantees and sanctions relief broke down.
So is there a deal?
Maybe.
Is there trust?
Absolutely not.
The real evidence will not come from a podium. It will come from ships moving normally, insurance premiums falling, energy cargoes returning and the American blockade lifting only as Iran complies.
Until those things happen, this is not peace.
It is a pause with a press release.
The El-Sayed Experiment Begins
Meanwhile, Michigan Democrats have selected Abdul El-Sayed as their nominee for the United States Senate.
El-Sayed narrowly defeated Representative Haley Stevens by fewer than 15,000 votes out of more than 1.5 million ballots. He now faces Republican Mike Rogers in a race that could help determine control of the Senate.
His victory should not be dismissed.
El-Sayed overcame more than $60 million in outside spending, traveled to 110 cities, held more than 500 events and built a volunteer operation that his campaign says grew to roughly 12,000 people. That is a real grassroots machine, regardless of whether anyone supports the politics behind it.
But winning a Democratic primary and winning Michigan are two entirely different missions.
Nearly half of primary voters supported Stevens. El-Sayed must now persuade moderates, independents and frustrated Stevens supporters that his campaign represents them too.
That task became substantially harder when streamer Hasan Piker responded to critics demanding party reconciliation by calling them Islamophobic and telling them to fall in line.
Nothing says “unity” quite like insulting the voters you still desperately need.
El-Sayed’s victory may prove that aggressive progressive politics can win a battleground-state primary.
November will determine whether it can survive contact with the rest of the electorate.
The Red Cross Sidenote
Then came footage from Ceuta, Spain, showing humanitarian personnel helping migrants after they swam around the maritime border separating the Spanish enclave from Morocco.
The Spanish Red Cross operates within the international Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, but it is a separate national organization from the American Red Cross. The federation contains 191 national societies that operate independently while following shared humanitarian principles.
Treating exhausted or injured people is not the scandal.
The scandal is when humanitarian assistance becomes indistinguishable from a government’s refusal to enforce its own border.
You can prevent someone from drowning without pretending borders are merely decorative suggestions.
Enter “Oxferd Comma”
The White House has also released declassified documents showing that the FBI opened an investigation in May 2017 into whether Trump was knowingly or unknowingly acting on behalf of Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey.
The operation’s name?
Oxferd Comma.
Not Oxford.
Oxferd.
The federal government apparently had access to classified intelligence, national-security authorities and unlimited investigative resources—but not spell-check.
The investigation was eventually absorbed into Robert Mueller’s work and closed in April 2019 without charges against Trump. Mueller’s investigation produced criminal cases involving several people around Trump but did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The misspelling is hilarious.
The underlying issue is not.
The question is whether the FBI had sufficient evidence to justify opening one of the most extraordinary investigations imaginable: an inquiry into whether the sitting president was effectively a foreign asset.
That is where the newly released documents matter.
Not because “Oxferd” proves a conspiracy, but because the investigative reasoning, evidence and internal doubts can now be examined instead of merely described by the institutions that created them.
Then They Found the Phone
And now we reach the object Washington may fear most.
A Senate panel investigating Anthony Fauci has obtained a copy of the iPhone he used during the COVID-19 era. The Department of Health and Human Services transferred the copy to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Ron Johnson.
One critical clarification: investigators possess a copy of the device’s data, but its substantive contents have not yet been publicly released.
So the phone is “unlocked” in the investigative sense—not yet opened for the public to scroll through like Hunter Biden’s laptop at a family reunion.
The phone could contain messages, call records, contacts, metadata, drafts or preserved communications that establish timelines unavailable through ordinary email records.
Or it could contain nothing explosive.
Nobody outside the investigation currently knows.
But its arrival comes at the worst possible moment for Fauci.
On Thursday morning, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to hold him in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times during testimony concerning the federal pandemic response. The committee approved Chairman Rand Paul’s referral, although disputes remain over whether it must also pass the full Senate before reaching the Justice Department.
Could the Phone Destroy Fauci’s Pardon?
This is where the political fantasy collides with the law.
New evidence would not automatically cancel Fauci’s pardon.
President Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for federal offenses he may have committed between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025, arising from his work as NIAID director, White House COVID adviser or member of the federal pandemic-response teams.
The entire purpose of a pardon is to protect someone from federal prosecution for covered conduct—even when evidence later emerges showing exactly why that protection mattered.
But the pardon has limits.
It cannot cover state crimes because presidents only possess clemency power over federal offenses.
It cannot protect conduct occurring after January 19, 2025.
It cannot protect another person whose communications appear on the phone.
It cannot automatically erase government records or evidence connected to the underlying conduct.
And it cannot prevent Congress from investigating, exposing misconduct, changing laws or issuing findings.
That means the phone probably cannot destroy the pardon.
But it could walk around it.
It could reveal possible state-law violations.
It could expose later obstruction or false statements.
It could identify unpardoned participants.
It could contradict previous testimony.
Or it could reveal that years of suspicion produced more smoke than fire.
That is what makes this phone dangerous.
Not because it guarantees prosecution.
Because it may connect people, conversations and decisions that Washington has spent years examining in isolation.
A pardon can close a federal courtroom door.
It cannot erase the phone.
And somewhere inside that device may be the difference between a political accusation and a documented historical record.
Categories: Politics
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