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After being ‘bamboozled by Russian propaganda,’ Laura Loomer says she’s all in for Ukraine

By CNN

(CNN) — For years, Laura Loomer’s unflinching support for President Donald Trump was matched only by her fervent opposition to the US assisting Ukraine in its war against Russia.

The far-right figure has accused Ukrainian soldiers of committing war crimes and President Volodymyr Zelensky of faking his Jewish faith. She once encouraged Russian President Vladimir Putin to seize the entire country.

Yet, on Friday, Loomer released an exceedingly friendly 45-minute interview with Zelensky recorded in Kyiv where she praised the country’s drone tactics, acknowledged she spread falsehoods about the war and expressed regrets for amplifying narratives that benefited Russia.

“I was bamboozled by Russian propaganda,” she told Zelensky, “and I came to believe a lot of untrue things about Ukraine.”

The admission marked a stunning reversal by one of Trump’s most loyal allies — one the president appeared to immediately embrace. On Thursday, Trump shared a promotional clip of the interview on Truth Social and wrote: “Very good!!!”

Two senior administration officials told CNN that the White House was unaware that Loomer had made the trip to war-torn Ukraine — a 30-hour journey that she said included a lengthy train ride from Poland to Kyiv because of airspace restrictions. Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to questions from CNN about her appearance there.

Her visit nevertheless presented a striking reminder of the unconventional currents that sometimes shape Trump’s foreign policy orbit. Images of her appearing alongside Zelensky emerged the same day Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in the Philippines. Loomer received a commitment from Zelensky to sign a peace deal with Russia at the White House or Trump’s Palm Beach estate; Rubio, meanwhile, acknowledged there’s been little movement toward an agreement.

Zelensky is set to meet Trump at the White House on Tuesday, a White House official told CNN. Zelensky said earlier this week that he’d spoken to Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “It was a good, important conversation on how to reinvigorate diplomacy and bring peace closer,” he posted on X.

Until recently, Loomer — who spends a significant amount of her time identifying and criticizing allegedly disloyal employees within the Trump administration — seemed unlikely ever to express sympathies for the Ukrainian people. In addition to using her massive digital platform to rally MAGA against the country in the war, she also previously wrote a series of op-eds for RT, the Kremlin-funded international television network.

A person in Kyiv with knowledge of how the Zelensky interview was arranged told CNN that there was a “considerable effort” in recent weeks to change Loomer’s worldview.

Reached briefly by phone as she toured the wreckage from a Russian airstrike, Loomer said she had a positive experience speaking with Zelensky. In subsequent messages with CNN, she did not elaborate on how the trip was arranged.

In her conversation with Zelensky, Loomer distanced herself from past statements accusing him of supporting neo-Nazi militias and praised the country’s new law criminalizing antisemitism. During her visit, she also met a prominent Ukrainian rabbi, Moshe Reuven Azman.

Loomer’s conversion drew a range of reactions, including deep skepticism from liberals and anti-Trump Republicans on X, some of whom questioned whether her change in view was genuine or financial. Loomer told the news outlet Puck that she paid for her own plane ticket but declined to say how other arrangements were covered, like security and her train ticket.

“The government of Ukraine did not pay for me to go, if that’s what you’re asking,” she told Puck.

Tim Pool, another far-right commentator and outspoken Ukraine critic, appeared to mock Loomer on X by posting his own change-of-heart on the war that he later seemed to reveal was insincere.

However, Zelensky’s inner circle was pleased with the initial reaction to Loomer’s appearance, the Kyiv source said, and they are optimistic she can now be an influential voice of support for Ukraine given her credibility with the president and many of his supporters. During the interview, Zelensky praised Trump and was receptive to Loomer’s overtures on how to win over MAGA, though he declined to say who he thought was better between President Joe Biden and the current office holder.

“History will answer,” he said, before naming Abraham Lincoln as the country’s best leader.

Loomer’s revisiting her longstanding opposition to Ukraine follows an escalating feud with Tucker Carlson over his opposition to Trump’s war with Iran. Like Loomer, Carlson has regularly shared Russian talking points while opposing US support for Ukraine’s defense.

But Loomer has grown increasingly suspicious of Carlson’s motivations, exposing a deep ideological fracture within the MAGA movement over foreign policy. Amid her travels to Ukraine, Loomer took aim at Carlson. At one point, she ate at a McDonalds still operating amid the rubble caused by airstrikes, a gesture intended to evoke Carlson’s controversial visit to Moscow two years ago, when he interviewed Putin, praised it as “nicer than any” US city and ate a Russian knock-off of the golden arches. McDonalds pulled out of the country in 2022 shortly after it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The emerging divisions within Trump’s base over the war comes amid intensifying air strikes between Ukraine and Russia. June marked the deadliest month for Ukraine civilians in more than four years, the United Nation’s recently reported, while drone attacks on Russian infrastructure and its warships have led to mounting casualties and presented new challenges for Putin.

Congress is weighing punishing Moscow with further sanctions in a bill designed to honor the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia. Trump has expressed a willingness to sign the bill if it also includes sanctions against Iran.

Asked about the sanctions legislation, Zelensky told Loomer that Trump “exactly understood who really doesn’t want to stop the war.”

“He understood that we really want peace,” Zelensky said.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

A DC trial was wrapping up when jurors made a discovery that shocked the courtroom

By CNN
(CNN) — The charges at a monthlong criminal trial in Washington’s federal court last month were fairly straightforward: That one man had allegedly held up seven 7-Elevens and a few other gas stations in spring 2023 and stolen cars.But the trial of Shamell Naquan Joyner had a twist. While deliberating, jurors found a Chinese yuan in one sweatshirt that was in evidence. And inside a jacket that was also part of the case, they found suspicious white powder in a folded up piece of paper. The prosecutors and judge said it appeared to be drugs.The DC US Attorney’s Office, law enforcement on the case and the defense team hadn’t known.The events of the jury deliberation raised eyebrows across the federal court in recent days, as word spread of what happened.Several longtime lawyers in Washington told CNN last week they hadn’t heard of a situation as embarrassing as this one, though some former prosecutors in DC conceded that every few years, a jury might land upon a piece of evidence that wasn’t examined by law enforcement thoroughly enough.Judge Rudolph Contreras, who presided over the trial, was flabbergasted.“The Court shares Mr. Joyner’s amazement at law enforcement’s failure to uncover the Chinese Yuan, note, and powdery substance in the physical evidence,” the judge, who has a decade of experience on the bench, wrote in an opinion a few days later.“Mr. Liolos, who I know is from New York, is probably astonished that any money got past the police department,” the judge also said on the bench, referring to John Liolos, one of Joyner’s lawyers.The FBI declined to comment when asked how agents on the case weren’t aware of the drugs and money in the pockets.When asked about how the evidence oversight happened, a spokesperson for the DC US Attorney’s Office didn’t answer directly.The accusationsProsecutors alleged Joyner had robbed 10 convenience stores and gas stations in central Washington, Maryland and northern Virginia in the spring of 2023. The robberies at first started a few days apart in April, then by May 2, Joyner was hitting several in the same day, they alleged. He also was accused of armed carjackings around two of the days that the armed robberies occurred.The series of incidents resulted in a 28-count indictment against Joyner in 2003. He wasn’t charged with drug possession.The case was big for the US Attorney’s Office. The trial lasted a full month, with the jury hearing witnesses testify over 10 trial days, then deliberations lasting another week. Joyner had as many as nine lawyers and three prosecutors at trial.The discoveryAs the jury was leaving on July 22, their second day of deliberations, a juror told courthouse staff they had found some items inside a jacket and a sweatshirt found in one of the carjacked cars that had been worn by the alleged robber.“We were looking at (the jacket), and (one of the jurors) reached in the breast pocket and she pulled out — it looked like a receipt, but there was a white powder or white substance inside,” the jury foreperson told the court on July 23, the next morning, according to a trial transcript obtained by CNN.“Some of it, kind of, spilled out a little bit, but (a juror) put it back in the pocket and we put it back in the bag,” the unnamed juror said.There was a sweatshirt the jurors could examine too as evidence in the jury room. A juror had looked in the pocket there “and he pulled out — it was crumpled up — it was a bill … one of the Chinese Yuan bills,” the foreperson then said.When the jurors found the suspected drugs and money in the pockets at the end of the second day of jury deliberations, the issue opened up major legal questions for Joyner.Both items of clothing had been key evidence putting Joyner at the scene of two of the May 2 robberies, and were inside the Toyota he was accused of stealing when police captured it a few days later.Would the jurors be prejudiced against Joyner now? Had the jury finding the suspected drugs corroborated witness testimony from the trial further than what Joyner’s defense lawyers anticipated?The Justice Department argued that a witness testified about Joyner stealing money during the armed robbery of four different convenience stores. At one of the 7-Elevens, a witness said the robber took his wallet, and it had in it a Chinese Yuan from a college study abroad trip.A cooperator who drove Joyner separately testified Joyner had paid him in drugs the night Joyner allegedly held up a gas station. The jacket with the apparent drugs in the pocket had been worn by the armed robber.After the discovery in the pockets, Contreras brought each of the jurors into the courtroom one by one.He told them the Chinese bill and the apparent drugs weren’t part of the evidence in the case. The jurors each told the court they could set aside those items in their consideration of the case against Joyner.They went back to deliberating.The verdictThe following Monday — the fifth day of deliberations — the jury had reached another predicament.They said they realized they couldn’t agree on more than half of the charges — representing five of the alleged armed robberies and one carjacking — Joyner faced.“The jury remains deadlocked on or unable to vote on the remaining 15 counts in this case,” they said in a note to the judge. “Our differences are in the areas of what constitutes a reasonable doubt and in how to determine identity beyond a reasonable doubt … In the absence of additional evidence or testimony, we cannot reach verdicts on the remaining 15 counts.”So, Contreras ended deliberations, taking a partial verdict.The diligence of the jury, unable to come to an agreement on several of the charges against Joyner, echoed an unusual challenge the US Attorney’s Office has faced in several other criminal trials this year.Still, the jury found Joyner guilty of 13 criminal charges, representing an armed robbery in mid-April 2023 in downtown Washington, and four armed robberies and a carjacking on May 2, 2023, in Northwest Washington and Maryland. “The jury’s verdict ensures the defendant will face a 31year mandatory minimum sentence, making the D.C. community safer with this serial robber off the streets,” a spokesperson from the US Attorney’s Office said about the case.Joyner’s defense attorneys haven’t yet appealed his conviction. They declined to comment because a final judgment in the case is not set in stone.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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